Empirical Evidence
by MirrorJaneD
Summary: Previously published on the KS archive. A KS rewriting of the end of the five year mission and TMP.
1. Chapter 1

"Check," said Commander Spock, thoughtfully.

James T Kirk came rapidly back from a place far away and stared at the board with consternation written all over his face. He studied the pieces, then looked up into his First Officer's face.

"I wasn't expecting that," he muttered. And then, accusingly, "You did that on purpose."

Spock's eyebrows arched.

"I admit to having moved my knight deliberately and with forethought," he said, drily. "You would hardly welcome a chess opponent who moved pieces at random."

Kirk bit back a grin.

"I might welcome a chess opponent who didn't put me in check in order to interrupt my train of thought."

"If that is the case I must, of course, apologise, Captain. Unaccountably, I had not realised that this was the purpose of our match this evening. Otherwise, I would naturally have postponed my move in order to accommodate your deliberations."

Kirk allowed the grin to surface. He stood, stretched and wandered over to the sideboard.

"Want a drink?" he threw over his shoulder. "I might need one to figure my way out of this one."

"No, thank you, Captain," came the expected reply. Kirk came back to the desk with two glasses and a bottle of brandy. They had been playing this particular routine for months now. On this occasion, Spock barely gave the glasses a glance. He said:

"May I ask what is on your mind, Captain?"

Kirk smiled, that full-on dazzle for which Spock would never admit, even to himself, to waiting, even to deliberately courting. He said, gently

"You could have simply asked, Spock, instead of putting your knight in jeopardy."

"My knight...?" Dark eyebrows shot up and Spock's eyes swung back to the board. He glanced up at Kirk, manifestly uncertain as to whether or not this was a bluff, and Kirk laughed out loud.

He reached out and poured two generous glasses, pushing one over to his friend.

"You may have to lead this mission on your own, Spock, and without any back-up, I'm afraid."

Spock said nothing but waited for clarification. He had known since Kirk laid out the chessboard earlier that evening that his captain was preoccupied, that the game would allow Kirk time and space to make a decision, that he would communicate it to Spock only when he wanted Spock's views and share it with the rest of the senior officers only after that. It was not the first time Kirk had used a game of chess for this purpose and Spock would put the odds very high – probably in the region of 97.88% - against it being the last. He held the glass in his hand, enjoying the swirl of cool gold liquid, and cocked an eye at his Commanding Officer.

Kirk smiled back, across his own glass, but he looked worried.

"I've had another report of kidnappings in the sector," he said bluntly.

"That report from HQ at 1400 hours today," Spock surmised.

"Yup. A team of scientists on Polus 7. Starfleet are really worried, though pretending not to be. And the Polus Governor's office is going demented, as you might imagine. The _Republic _has been dealing with it, but I think Ray Marsh is rather out of his depth. I don't want to tread on his toes, but – well, I think I'm going to have to go over there."

"You would like me to lead the mission to Dolganin," offered Spock. "I have already assembled a team and this will cause no difficulty."

Kirk sighed.

"Yes, I'm going to have to take the ship to Polus and, no, the Dolganin survey won't wait. Which is ridiculous, because you and I both know it's about as urgent as writing to my grandmother, and my grandmother has been dead twenty five years. But that's how it is. And it needs a command-ranking team leader – again, not because it does, because that's how it is. You know." Spock knew. The Dolganin system, small and remote but rich in dilithium deposits, had agreed after years of careful negotiation to join the Federation, and the request for a Starfleet team to carry out a survey of their most distant moon was the equivalent of asking a Nobel prize-winning scientist to prescribe painkiller for a child with a cold (Kirk had said). Starfleet, surprisingly (or not surprisingly, Kirk had also said, depending on your point of view) had been quite clear on the need to deploy their flagship vessel for this purpose. Oddly (or, there again, not oddly, depending again on your point of view), Kirk had not been vociferously opposed to the idea.

The planet was, by all accounts and according to the _Enterprise's _initial remote findings, a paradise. Kirk and Spock had each visited enough deadly paradises not to take this for granted, but nevertheless, the signs were promising. Kirk had come up with a mission plan which involved the ship's two commanding officers, a small team of scientists, a shuttle, a temporary base station and a week planetside.

"A week, Captain?" Spock had asked, eyebrows climbing. "I find it very unlikely that the survey will take a week to complete. While it is commendable to build into the schedule a margin of additional time on a contingency basis to allow for error and for the unexpected, optimal planning for the remainder of our current mission suggests that –"

"- that the Captain and First Officer aren't always rushing at warp 8 to complete everything," Kirk had finished smoothly. "C'mon, Spock. Give. Loosen up. We'll finish the survey in five days, I agree. And then, if it checks out, we'll have two days' leave, and so will the rest of the crew. Let it happen."

Kirk's plans had involved more than those two days of leave. The captain of the _Enterprise _would always put the mission first, that was without question. At the same time, if Starfleet wanted to waste the valuable time of an extremely efficient command team on diplomatic candy, Kirk wasn't above balancing the boredom of the mission with some fringe benefits. Both he and Spock would be somewhat superfluous to mission needs. Which meant that a week on Dolganin, carefully planned and implemented, would allow him some serious time alone with Spock.

There was, of course, not the slightest need to devise complicated schemes to spend time with Spock, given that the Fleet's largest ship contained ample facilities designed specifically for the optimal functioning of its command team. And it was not as though Kirk loved his First Officer, nor as though that love were returned. Strictly speaking, in fact, Kirk had no empirical evidence of Spock's feelings either way. But there was empirical evidence and empirical evidence. And the fact of the matter was that only four months remained of the five year mission and time for many things, including chess games, shore leave and declarations of love, was running out.

It could be argued, of course, that chess games were empirical evidence. It could be argued that the lift of an eyebrow, in a particular context, was empirical evidence. Kirk's private dossier of empirical evidence also included the following: a broad smile and a near embrace on a memorable occasion in Sickbay; a moment's support in a turbolift en route to Starbase 4 from Triacus; and a delay of incomprehensible duration in Tholian space – plus a rather large number of offers of promotion, which Kirk happened to know Spock had turned down and which Spock (Kirk believed) was unaware that Kirk knew he had received, thereby avoiding the necessity to discuss Spock's motivation for declining them.

At the time, hearing about Kirk's plans for Dolganin, Spock had opened his mouth, met Kirk's eyes and closed it again, which came close to constituting a further item in Kirk's dossier, especially given subsequent discussions – admittedly instigated enthusiastically by Kirk but not ruled out of hand by Spock – of camping equipment for two, trekking routes and nutrition compatible with old fashioned camp fires . Now, Kirk set down his glass with unnecessary force and pulled a PADD towards him.

Spock watched him.

"Captain," he said levelly, "I am more than qualified, both in scientific and diplomatic terms, to lead this mission. The mission to Polus is of much greater significance, not least in terms of the risk involved to a considerable number of lives, and your deployment on that basis is the most logical and efficient use of resources at this point in time."

Kirk glanced up sharply and met the dark eyes. Something illogical and indefinable clashed between them – resentment and accusation from the human, refusal from the Vulcan. The air was suddenly heavier than it had been before the Vulcan's chess move.

Kirk said, tasting the words, neither quite stating nor quite asking:

"You are not sorry to be missing the opportunity to spend some time with your Commanding Officer before the end of the mission."

Spock said, very carefully

"I was not aware that we were having a personal conversation, nor making personal arrangements in the context of an emerging political and humanitarian emergency."

Kirk laughed, shortly.

"Clearly not. I had thought, though, that this was precisely what we were doing before the emergency arose."

It was further than he had ever ventured into their No Man's Land of non-admission. But it was too late, now, the words were out.

Into the silence, Spock said, blandly

"You give neither of us sufficient credit, Captain. That would have been entirely inappropriate behaviour under any circumstances within the context of a command-led mission."

Nothing much for the dossier there, then. Kirk swallowed. He had his answer. At least, for now.

And, being Kirk, he turned immediately into Starship Captain.

"We'll break orbit at 0800 hours," he said, playing the numbers in his head. "That means, by the time we've got to Polus and back, you'll have had five and a bit days to play with on Dolganin. Is it too much to ask, Commander, that you could manage to stay out of trouble for that long?"

Vulcan eyebrows rose, predictably.

"Five point three two days, sir. And Vulcans do not – "

"- get into trouble. Sure. Better get an early night, just in case," Kirk said, affectionately, and Spock rose and nodded.

"Goodnight, Jim."

Kirk watched his First Officer walk across the room and waited till the doors had opened to say, casually

"Oh, and Spock?"

The First Officer of the _Enterprise _turned.

"I nearly forgot. Checkmate."

* * *

The first watch the next day was uneventful, giving Kirk's thoughts time to wander back over the conversation the night before. Walking down to the shuttle bay that morning to see Spock and the team off, he had studied his friend covertly for any signs of discomfort or retreat and found none. True to his word, Spock's team had already been carefully selected and briefed and Kirk's chagrin at missing the time he had promised himself with Spock was ameliorated by pride in his crew and the efficiency with which the unexpected was accommodated and converted into faultless delivery. There was little for Kirk to do beyond saying a few words to each member of the team and drawing Spock to one side for a final farewell.

"I apologise for last night, Mr Spock," he said, smiling into his friend's eyes and knowing Spock would be aware of the double-entendre. "It was underhand of me to win the game using that particular strategy and I am honour bound to offer a rematch at the first possible opportunity."

Spock nodded slowly.

"I will look forward to that, sir."

"Well, good luck, Commander," Kirk said, lightly. "And I do hope it is, indeed, a paradise, but take care, all the same." He reached out and clasped Spock's shoulder; Spock saluted and the moment was gone.

Chekov reported a slight course change to maximise speed to Polus and a Yeoman brought him the report he had requested from the first kidnapping, a middle-ranking Starfleet officer on leave in Alorus 5. Something nagged at Kirk around the details of the kidnap, something which rang a bell. He knew himself well enough that it would come to him if he distracted himself, so he did both what he wanted to do and what the strategic situation called for – asked for a coffee and disengaged his mind , which took about 7.45 seconds to return to his Science Officer.

For the majority of the five year mission, Kirk had been content to let his friendship with his First Officer develop without any sort of steer from his part. Any form of deliberate or contrived framework would have been inconceivable for a relationship which, developing organically of its own accord, in the most unlikely of circumstances and between the most unlikely of participants, had come to be the most important of Kirk's life. He had never looked for it or anything like it. Whilst enjoying friendly relationships as a junior officer, he had been all too aware of their fragility, vulnerable as they were not only to mission casualties but more mundanely to transfers and promotions, without notice and without consultation. Signing on in his first command, he had additionally in mind the need for fairness, the regulations against fraternalisation, the importance of developing a command rapport which could be capsized by strong feelings of any kind for one crewmember over another. So he had expected his five year mission to be professionally satisfying without the nourishment of human warmth, punctuated nonetheless by sessions in McCoy's office fuelled by Romulan ale and Georgian folk wisdom. But then he had met Spock.

Kirk had no real idea about what life after the mission would look like; he only knew that, tough as losing the _Enterprise_ was going to be, if the future didn't involve chess games with Spock it might, just might, not actually be tolerable. He had moved beyond the idea of an open, frank conversation where they explored their feelings for each other – nice, but at this point and given Spock's current demeanour, somewhere between impossible and stupid – and had recently conceived the idea of proposing to the Vulcan that they took out a temporary lease on an apartment together. Kirk didn't feel this had any particular overtones attached – not least because he was unsure of what he himself wanted from Spock, beyond guaranteed physical proximity, the smile in dark eyes that Kirk knew was only for him, that hand on his arm, that voice in his head and the chance to let it grow naturally towards wherever it was going. Sometimes, he woke at night in imaginary warmer-than-human arms; sometimes, he paused in the middle of shore leave liaisons and wondered what on earth he thought he needed from Spock; sometimes, he was glad Spock was unaware of where his thoughts ran at night – and hoped that this was, in fact, true; sometimes, he caught Spock's eye across a briefing room and _knew, _empirical evidence or not, that he'd been right all along. Naturally, there would be a number of bedrooms in this apartment and the arrangement could be presented as a financial and administrative solution to two single people not wanting to board in barracks indefinitely. He had not the slightest idea of how Spock would react to the suggestion, having entirely lacked, to date, the courage to put it to him.

The trouble was that, as the mission drew to an end, he knew himself, against his own inclination, to be anxious about what this friendship would look like, outside the confines of the ship, subject to the scrutiny of others and where, above all, they were suddenly presented with choices – not to work together, not to live together, not to sit together on a bridge which encapsulated neatly all that Kirk wanted from life – command decisions (taken with Spock) and off duty relaxation (taken with Spock). As five years became three – two - one year and now four months, he found himself increasingly uncertain of what Spock's choices might have been. And what they would be.

And just as Kirk was aware that he was beginning to push the Vulcan for responses which he was clearly unwilling to give – resulting in tense and, frankly, unedifying exchanges such as the one the night before – so Spock was, unless Kirk was utterly paranoid, beginning to withdraw. A year into the mission, and therefore nine months after they had started playing chess and eight and a half months after Kirk's dizzying realisation that the tall, slim figure in Science blues whose normal discourse was a mathematical formula to seven decimal points had become his friend, Kirk had discovered that Spock had been keeping score. At that point, Kirk was narrowly ahead by a margin of six games. Swallowing back an inner tidal wave of warmth – less at the score, more at the fact that it was being kept – Kirk proposed that at the end of the five year mission, both commanding officers would go on shore leave together, at the expense of the loser and the choice of the victor for the number of days equivalent to the winning margin of matches. Spock had said:

"I have no objection to such an arrangement, Captain. My intention has always been that at the end of our mission, after prolonged engagement with the Terran majority on the _Enterprise, _in order to redress to what extent possible the balance in my life and prior to any other posting, I would seek leave temporarily to enter a mediation faculty on Vulcan to improve my techniques and re-acclimatise myself to the desert climate." And, most unusually, had turned away rather suddenly from the expression on Kirk's face, leaving Kirk almost sure that the Vulcan controls had slipped and that a full frontal exposure would have shown a smile reaching well beyond those black eyes.

However, when Kirk had made a recent allusion to the arrangement, the First Officer had said, remotely

"In fact, Captain, whilst I initially felt concern that I might be an inadequate opponent for you, given your prowess in the game, we have appeared to have acquired a degree of understanding of each other's board strategies and the margin by which you are ahead is currently insignificant and certainly insufficient to allow for travel anywhere very removed from Starfleet HQ where you are likely to be based."

The only factor in that speech coming close to empirical evidence was Spock's admission that the two now lived in each other's heads. Which was something, if Kirk were feeling optimistic.

Sometimes, Kirk mused that there would come a time when Spock would be prepared to give his perspective on the games they had played for most of the five year mission – not on the chess games, but on what this evasion, that denial meant – what lay behind that particular expression or that particular silence. Sometimes, though, he thought that it wouldn't be necessary, that when they were able to come together he would simply know that he had been right all along, that everything had been as he had seen it, all those years.

There were also times, of course, when he thought that perhaps that time would never come and he would never be able to ask and would never know. But he would not be James T Kirk if these times came very often.

And it was because he was James T Kirk that it was at precisely this point in his thoughts that he realised what had snagged his attention in the report on Alorus 5. A sensation with which he was familiar – a combination of anxiety and a surge of adrenalin that said "_I can do this"_ – swept over him and he leaned forward sharply in his chair.

"Mr Chekhov, increase speed to warp 9, please. And Uhura, get me Starfleet Command, please, on a secure channel."

Out here, in a remote sector, only four months from the end of the mission and without Spock. It would have to be Klingons.

* * *

Kirk had met junior ensigns with more strategic grasp than the Governor of Polus.

"A military solution," he said patiently for the sixth time that morning, "may or may not be viable. Starfleet will not back away from one where it would be appropriate. However, at this point we simply have insufficient knowledge of where the hostages are being held."

"I thought, Captain, that this sort of thing was your job," the Governor said, heavily. "Are you telling me Starfleet has no idea where these people are? They've been gone for days, man!"

Kirk did not like being called "man", nor did he like the Governor's choice of clothes, food or diplomatic advisors, but he reminded himself that these things were unimportant in the scale of things – also that the Governor, for all that he wore dayglo pink clothing, smelled of sour milk, made preposterously unfunny and tasteless jokes which were lapped up by his sycophantic secretariat - and clearly thought Kirk was a particularly moronic second lieutenant, was legitimately and justifiably concerned about the lives of individuals seized on his territory.

"We have ascertained," he said, carefully, "that the three scientists taken from Polus are being held by a division of the Klingon intelligence service under an individual called Commander Kron, with whom we have established contact. The Klingons have rather spuriously claimed a section of this quadrant and on that basis are justifying their actions on the basis that Starfleet officials in the area can be randomly accused of espionage. Our experience of the Klingons suggests that it is unprofitable to spend too much time unpicking their professed rationale – the truth is more likely to be that they will fabricate whatever excuses they need to target particular personnel . It would be profitable instead to consider the profiles of the known victims to try to understand why they have been singled out – and who might be next."

"Next? Good God, man, you mean you're contemplating letting them take more hostages instead of trying to save the ones we've already lost! I didn't realise you lot were so defeatist." There were murmurs of consent around the table and the young civil servant nearest the Governor said "Hear, hear, sir."

Kirk drew a deep breath, and at that point his communicator went off.

"Forgive me, gentlemen," he said, briefly, and stepped away from the table.

"Kirk here," he said, facing the window and scanning the view automatically. A scene not unlike Earth – trees, a grassy area, some kids playing with what looked like an old tyre. Uhura's voice came through the comm. Looking back on it, he might have detected a strained note, but that would have been hindsight. At the time, it was simply his Communications Officer relaying a message.

"Captain, we have received another message from Kron, sir."

"Another? Good, at least he's still in communication. Can you pipe it down to the conference?"

"Yes, sir," and this was the point at which the hesitation in her voice was unmistakable. "You might want to be aware of its contents first, though, Captain."

Kirk frowned.

"Why? Give me the headline news, Uhura, what does he want?"

"Sir – sir, he says that the team we left on Dolganim are now in his hands, sir. Captain, he is giving you three days to surrender the ship or he will execute Mr Spock."

There was a burst of laughter from the children outside. Inside, Kirk heard further chuckles, doubtless in response to a further sally by the governor.

"_Is it too much to ask, Commander, that you could manage to stay out of trouble for that long?"_

He put his hand up to his face, rubbed his forehead, and shook his head slightly, as though not understanding something. He felt horribly cold, suddenly, chilled to the bone. And then the moment passed, and he turned back to the briefing table.


	2. Chapter 2

"There's one hour left, sir, till Kron's deadline, sir. You – uh – you wanted me to let you know, " Sulu said uncomfortably.

"Yes, thank you, Mr Sulu," Kirk said, tiredly. He knew he had, what seemed like at least six months ago, asked Sulu to ensure he was aware of the passing of time. He couldn't now imagine how he had ever thought that was necessary. Everywhere he looked, there seemed to be chronometers; large, clear dials with accusing numbers on them. _If I get Spock and all of us out of this, _Kirk thought with gallows humour, _I'll come up with a new regulation banning chronometers from the bridge. Who came up with this design, anyway? And why on earth did we ever think we'd need so many?_

Watching the screen in front of himself with unseeing eyes, he mentally reviewed the list of options open to him. It was thin stuff, with little comfort.

Option number one, military solution. This had a number of merits, being both the favourite of the Governor of Polus and also of James T Kirk. (Kirk's own preferences, in fact, went considerably beyond a rescue mission and included the infliction on Kron of various physical practices none of which, he was fairly sure, were listed in the Starfleet training manual, some of which the Klingon might not even have heard of and all of which were morally unconscionable.) None of these factors were relevant, however, due to the entire failure of the assembled task force to locate the hostages. In fact, the sum total of knowledge, ascertained over the past three days, was that the Alorus 5 victim, the three scientists from Polus 7 and Spock were all being held together. It was also known that two of the Dolganin team had been killed and the rest had evaded capture and were now secured on the _Enterprise. _They had been questioned exhaustively and clearly knew nothing of any value. And the location of the remaining six hostages remained known only to Kron. Frustratingly, it was relatively certain that Kron was communicating from the same sector as the taskforce, due to the quality and timing of the dialogue. But it was a crowded part of the quadrant and for all that could be achieved in three days, Kirk had observed bitterly, they might as well start digging on the nearest beach.

McCoy had said

"Can't you trace the source of the calls, Jim? Or the warp signature of the craft which took them? Can't you do _something?"_

And Kirk, summoning everything he had because he knew that McCoy was almost as terrified as he was and that snapping would achieve nothing, just said,

"No, Bones. No one ever got a fix on the craft. And Kron's not stupid, he uses carrier waves when he calls so the point of origin is obscured. There's nothing we can do."

Option number two, then. Negotiate. Tried and tried and tried. And, so far, failed. Ray Marsh, the _Republic's _CO, had been working on this. He had a team of trained hostage negotiators on board and had built a rapport with Kron before Kirk had arrived at Polus. That hadn't stopped Kirk speaking to Kron himself, knowing that a different voice can bring a different perspective and offer a different angle. He had, however, let Ray lead, due to a marked antagonism on Kron's part to Kirk himself, noted by Marsh's negotiating team as though, Kirk though irritably, they had the corner on recognising aggression and it wasn't blindingly obvious to everyone involved. Kirk wasn't just Public Enemy Number One in the Klingon Empire, it transpired, he was also the murderer of Kron's only son, who had been involved in the incident with Kang off Beta Xll-A. Kirk couldn't even remember how many Klingons had been killed, if any, let alone anyone who might have been Kron's son. It made no difference. Nothing did.

Option number three, give Kron the _Enterprise. _Not top of Kirk's list. Not going to happen.

Option number four. Keep talking for the next sixty minutes and then acknowledge defeat. Also not top of Kirk's list. He had seen Kron's psych profile and the background report of previous hostages. Of eighteen known prisoners, twelve had been subject to high level torture over a long period of time and ten had been raped. None had survived. He had only Kron's word that the hostages would not be touched before the deadline. He didn't like to speculate on the value of that word.

He always said that he didn't get paid to fail, but he was beginning to feel as though past sins were catching up with him and he was playing out the Kobayashi Maru scenario, without the benefit of adjusted simulation programmes. Adrenalin surged – and receded, leaving exhaustion. He hadn't slept since receiving Kron's ultimatum. He had asked McCoy for pills to keep him going, knowing he had the knack for spotting the unlikely solution, the all-but-invisible way through, reluctant to leave everything to the _Republic _team, talking again to the panic-stricken and guilty remnant of the Dolganin survey team – reassuring them that they were not to blame and then, in the same breath, asking if they could remember anything, anything at all, which might help. Even on the two occasions he had, despite himself, found himself lying on his bed with eyes closing, he found sleep evaded him. Instead, he saw Spock, the last time they had been together in his quarters, the changed orders which left the Vulcan alone on Dolganin, his luring of Spock's knight, Spock's refusal to admit to disappointment at their missed opportunity for shore leave together.

"_You're going to have to lead this mission on your own and without any back up, I'm afraid." _No. No, there had been no back up.

"_I was not aware that we were having a personal conversation..." _

Oh, Spock. We never had that personal conversation. You never wanted to, and I was too scared. And then I left you alone on Dolganin in the middle of a kidnap scare. And I was even pleased with myself because I managed to checkmate you at the same time. Gold help me – they are right to ground me after the mission is over. I need my head examining.

And so he had gone back up to the bridge, to the latest report from the _Republic, _to the accusing chronometers.

And that left only one option. It was reasonably likely to succeed, it would release Spock and it would save the ship. The only problem with it was that Spock would absolutely hate it, and Kirk wasn't too enamoured of it himself. But needs must.

"Scotty," he said, abruptly. "Meet me in the transporter room in thirty minutes, please."


	3. Chapter 3

Scott said "Energise", Kyle's fingers moved carefully on the controls and the dazzle formed on the transporter pad and then reformed into the ship's First Officer. McCoy, watching from beside Scott in an odd mixture of anxiety and concern, saw moving over the controlled face a series of minute tremors which he knew would be all but undetectable to anyone but to him and to Jim Kirk, who could read his inscrutable Science Officer like a very, very large print book. Under any other circumstances, it would have vastly amused the doctor who, even without Kirk's help, could quite clearly see shattering relief, followed by puzzlement, followed by fear, followed by the inevitable question from the person who knew Kirk better than anyone else alive:

"Where is Captain Kirk?"

Scott had already accepted that answering this question would fall to him, and it was with a straight back, a chin in the air and a rather more marked Scots accent than normal that he said, squarely:

"The Captain beamed down to Polus 7 five minutes ago, sir."

Spock's eyes locked with the Chief Engineer's and something indefinable shifted in his features. _He has understood, _thought McCoy, watching. _He has worked it all out, just like that, in eleven words, and he knows. He knows what would have been the only way out and he knows Jim, so he knows everything, and he will ask Scotty for every last detail and we will all go over it and over it and over it, but from here on in none of it will change any of what Spock already knows or any of what has happened._

"Mr Scott, I did not ask what the Captain did five minutes ago. I would like to know where he is now." The voice had a total lack of expression, a tone McCoy knew of old. He also knew it did not augur well, not for any of them. But he had, of course, been prepared for that.

Scott said, in the same tone of voice as before:

"Polus 7 was the agreed location for the hostage swap, sir. Captain Kirk's present whereabouts are unknown."

Spock's journey from the transporter pad to Kyle's station happened in a blur rather than through the usual means of the detectable motion of legs. A Vulcan fist slammed into the comm link and McCoy winced internally and could see Kyle wondering whether he should call Engineering to start repairs now. Spock said, still in that tone of voice:

"Bridge, this is Commander Spock. Please contact Kron immediately."

Uhura's voice came through, tinnily.

"Mr Spock! Yes sir... Sir, I can't do that. Kron is not acknowledging."

"Try again, Lieutenant."

"Yes sir. Sir, he is still not responding."

"Keep trying, Lieutenant," Spock said, in a tone which would have been fierce had it not been illogical to order a highly competent Communications Officer to contact someone who manifestly did not want to be contacted. McCoy said, very gently:

"Spock..." and Spock turned to him, almost turned _on _him.

"How could you let him do this, Doctor?"

McCoy blinked at the tone and the question, although in fact it was no less than he had expected. Spock was bound to ask him, because he was Spock, and because he was Spock, he would know perfectly well that McCoy had been totally powerless in the matter. Jim Kirk was an unstoppable force of nature and even without being vested with the totally legitimate command of his own ship, it was McCoy's (and Spock's) experience that, sooner or later, most people and most things did what Kirk wanted. The longer you resisted, the more time you wasted. It was as simple as that.

"Spock – he knew what he wanted and he knows what he's doing." It was lame, but it was all he could manage. He _had_ been powerless, damn it. And he, too, had lost his closest friend.

Spock gave him a look which would have spelled serious trouble for third year junior school pupils misbehaving at the back of the class, and reached again for the comm link.

"Lieutenant Uhura..."

"I'm sorry, sir," Uhura's voice was showing clear signs of strain, "I can't –"

"Never mind, Lieutenant. You may cease trying Kron for the time being. Please get me a channel through to Captain Marsh on the _Republic."_

"Yes, sir," Uhura said, gratefully, in the tone of voice of a professional who is glad to be given a task within their job description which is reasonably achievable without bending the laws of physics. "Opening a channel for you now, sir."

Static crackled for a few seconds, and then Ray Marsh's voice came sharply on the line, spilling out in the transporter room between the four men.

"Commander Spock? Are you safe? Are you harmed?"

"Sir, I am safe and unharmed, thank you. I would like to enquire –"

"I'm enormously relieved to hear it. We have the rest of the group here on the _Republic, _and they seem well. In fact, they appear particularly grateful to you for your leadership and support while you were all in Kron's hands, and I'd like you to know, Commander, that this will not go unnoticed. Well done. As you know –"

"Sir," Spock said, swiftly, and McCoy thought – _I've actually heard Spock interrupt a commanding officer, he must be terrified. _And then – _I knew he was terrified anyway. I'd just like to be able to tell Jim. _And he swallowed suddenly, painfully.

The Vulcan was continuing, urgently

"Sir, Captain Kirk –"

Marsh's voice changed, suddenly – switched from slightly blustering to stone cold sober.

"Totally unorthodox, and between you and me, I'm not sure how HQ are going to see it. You'll not be surprised to hear that I took a lot of persuading – well, frankly, it was his idea and there wasn't much I could do about it. He was sure that Kron wanted him badly enough he'd let the lot of you go, and it seems in retrospect, now, that he was right. He even thought it was possible you were all taken with the express purpose of leading Kron to him – well, who knows? It's academic now, I suppose."

Spock said, still in the tone of one addressing third year pupils but now directed towards the remedial class rather than the misbehaving back row:

"Starfleet cannot condone giving into the demands of kidnappers. Further, Captain Kirk's personal value to the Fleet –"

"I know, I know," Marsh said, sounding tired over the link and suddenly rather more human. McCoy could almost hear the sound of hands being run through his hair. "I know, and he's a friend, as well, and, of course, an incalculable loss to you and your crew." _Not Spock's crew, _McCoy thought, putting up a wall against the meaning behind the words. _Not Spock's crew. Jim's crew. _"But at the end of the day, it was five lives for one. And – trust him, Spock. Give him some credit. I suspect he knows what he's doing. He's wearing a viridian patch –"

"Kron will have had it removed before the Captain has even left Polus 7," Spock said, having apparently, McCoy thought, got thoroughly into the swing of interrupting.

"I realise that. But we're doing all we can to keep a trace. And Jim's view was simply that you and your fellow hostages were going to be killed and that he, Jim, was of more value to the Klingons alive. And at the end of the day, with five lives, that's a pretty powerful argument, Commander."

"Only," said Spock, "if he was right."

* * *

One thing Vulcans and doors have in common is that neither have any emotions. So, taking two steps into his quarters at the end of the longest day he had ever known and coming to a sudden, mind-numbing halt in the entrance to his office, it would have been illogical for Spock to have heard two conflicting messages in the soft whisper as the doors closed behind him. One would have told him (had he been listening) that he was safe, that he was back in the only place he had ever (to himself) called home. The other would have told him (had he not already known) that he was in an alien ship, that the _Enterprise _would never be home again, that without that familiar presence the other side of the connecting bulkhead the ship had become, again, the impersonal collection of engines, computers and human beings who had made up his world before his parameters had crumbled at the arrival of Jim Kirk.

Razor sharp memory showed him a thousand pictures (Spock was for once in his life beyond calculating the precise number) of Kirk in these very quarters: Kirk, wandering around and asking questions about Vulcan artefacts while Spock watched, heart in mouth (had he been prepared to admit it) expecting breakages which never came; Kirk, pacing up and down and talking himself in or out of a decision, needing Spock's responses, sometimes only occasionally, sometimes only his silent companionship; Kirk, his face openly triumphant after winning a game of chess; Kirk, just curled in a chair in the corner, reading reports or even a book while Spock worked at his computer; Kirk, laughing at Spock with that look which went through every Vulcan wall which Spock had ever erected – successfully, in relation to every being in the universe. Except one.

"_You are not sorry to be missing the opportunity to spend some time with your Commanding Officer before the end of the mission." _Almost the last words Kirk had ever said to him. _Oh, Jim._

Enough. Spock made himself continue walking, although inexplicably and shamefully every bone in his body ached. Half-way across the office space, he noticed that his message light was blinking. And realised, lightning-swift, that Kirk would have left a message – why had he not thought of this earlier? – perhaps something that would help, that would signify an exit from this impossible cul-de-sac.

He pressed the playback and the screen filled with the image of – Jim. Kirk was at his desk, evidently making preparations to leave. He glanced up as the recording started and smiled straight at the camera – the broadest of Kirk's impressive repertoire of smiles, affectionate and tender. Spock caught his breath in unacknowledged pain.

"Spock, if you are listening to this, you are on the _Enterprise, _safe and well and hopping mad. I know that. I know it, and it makes no difference - I would still have done it. I am sorry about the hopping mad bit, but there's not a lot I can do about that. I've given it a lot of thought, and the thing is," Kirk dropped the flippancy, rounded the desk to come nearer the camera and lowered his tone, "- the thing is, I am doing this as Jim Kirk, rather than the captain of the _Enterprise. _At the end of the day, it seems to me, everyone has certain rights, and one of them is to put yourself in the line of fire for the people you love." Another direct look at the camera, a softened voice. "For the person you love. So – in case it all goes horribly wrong, don't let this be a burden, Spock, and I hope it's not, but I'm doing what I want to do." The image straightened and looked off camera, then glanced at a chronometer and then back on screen. "Spock. T'hy'la. Be happy. Live long and prosper." And then the image went dark.

Spock was unsure if he could bear the pain of absorbing the words Kirk had left. He thought the best thing might be to forget he had ever listened to them and to pretend to himself that he had not, in case he were tempted to re-play the message once he had forgotten it. He tried to recognise that this was illogical, particularly for a species with eidetic memory, but got no further than remembering Kirk, on the bridge after their encounter with Nomad, himself congratulating his friend on his logical defeat of the probe _("You didn't think I had it in me, did you, Mr Spock?"_) and had to turn away sharply, physically, as though it were possible to move away from his own memories.

And Kirk was right about one thing. He would never forgive Jim for this. He hoped he got a chance to tell him so. It was all he had left.


	4. Chapter 4

It took the combined intelligence forces of Starfleet sixty two days to locate Kron.

Sixty two days is not always a long time. On Earth, sixty two days is not much longer than a child's summer holiday and passes like a sunny afternoon. The green turtles of Altair 3 are reputed to live for over a thousand years, and it can reasonably assumed that sixty two days, in their sight, is as the blink of an eye. If, however, you are the Chief Medical Officer of a starship, your captain and friend is missing in the hands of a psychopathic sadist alien maniac and if you have sole pastoral charge of said captain's First Officer and closest friend whose many gifts and talents do not include effective emotional management, sixty two days can be a very long time indeed. And if you happen to be the First Officer in question, if you are trying hard simultaneously to forget a taped message from a figure in command gold with a halogen smile, the psych profile of the pitiless and corrupt being who has kidnapped him and the last of many times you yourself have turned away from that smile – if all you have left is a towering rage to which no self-respecting Vulcan could begin to admit – sixty two days is probably pretty much a thousand years. It is not logical, but it is often the case.

Whether he was in role of Acting Captain or whether he was working to support Starfleet in the seemingly hopeless task of finding one human being in a quadrant of space (and McCoy was relatively sure that sleep did not feature on Spock's agenda at all), McCoy stuck as close as he could, and Spock seemed to permit it, seemed to allow McCoy a licence which would never have been granted had Kirk been there, their familiar hypotenuse, joining and keeping them apart. McCoy often thought of Miramanee, those cruelly slow two months travelling back to the obelisk planet, Spock's strength carrying them all, his determination to save Kirk a greater source of power than auxiliary impulse. This felt worse, much worse. He and Spock had been at loggerheads then, but that was nothing new and only distraction behaviour under the skin. But for Jim and Spock it had been years ago, layers of friendship ago, and McCoy sensed Spock was in crisis now, for reasons he could not quite understand.

"Tell me, Spock," he said, directly, one rare evening when he had persuaded his Acting Captain to eat with him in the officer's mess. "I do understand why you feel Jim endangered his life recklessly, maybe even unprofessionally – that you feel as though he has made you responsible, even, for whatever happens to him - illogical though that is." McCoy was not above a grin at this point, and Spock not above a raised eyebrow. "But that's who Jim is, you know that. He's loyal and he's reckless, he jumps in where angels fear to tread – you've always known that, it's what makes him who he is, how he gets results. And he doesn't like the responsibility for the deaths of his crew. You know all this. Why is this so different?"

Spock looked at his food consideringly. McCoy was sure he would be given an evasive reply but to his surprise Spock put his cutlery down, steepled his fingers and said, slowly

"The Captain had no right to substitute his life for mine. Mine was imperilled, but not by him, and that means the two circumstances are not parallel. I understand your views, Doctor, but my own are coloured by two things: by my position as First Officer and by my nature as a Vulcan. As a First Officer, it is my role to keep the Captain safe. As a Vulcan, failure in that role brings dishonour. And the Captain has not only gravely endangered himself under my responsibility, he has done so _because _of me. That has significant implications for my relationship to the causality of what has happened, and that is why it profoundly affects my views of his actions and of the basis of our shared command function and (as your professional prowess allows you to perceive) affects also my own well being at this point. Do you understand?"

Watching him, McCoy thought with pity – _Yes, Spock. It hurts. A broken heart is called a broken heart not because of fanciful romantic notions but because it hurts – yes, just there, under the ribs or in your side, wherever you keep it - but eventually everywhere, just like a damaged heart will eventually kill the whole body. _Spock's anger with Jim was what was keeping him going. Learning for certain Jim was dead might be the only thing which would allow him to identify the pain for what it really was.

Out loud, he said quietly

"I'm sorry, Spock, it hurts me, too," and was immeasurably touched, on reaching out to brush gently against Spock's sleeve, that the Vulcan waited a full three point two seconds before turning away.

And then, eventually, Day 62 and the news. The camp had been located, the hostages freed but Kron not found. _Who gives a shit about Kron? _thought McCoy, watching with a tenderness which caught him unawares Spock's tightly controlled face, his refusal to hope. All the doctor wanted to know was the anwers to three easy questions: _Where's Jim? Is he safe? Is he alive? _ And was told that for security reasons, there would be no word for forty eight hours on the identities of the hostages, just the fact that they had been taken to Starbase 19.

So the _Enterprise _went to Starbase 19.

* * *

Jim Kirk was playing chess with an Anatusian. At least, he thought it was chess. He wasn't entirely sure and he was absolutely sure that the Anatusian wasn't sure. None of the moves the Anatusian had made corresponded to the rules of chess as traditionally played and as painstakingly explained by Kirk. He was relatively certain he had already put his opponent in checkmate several times during the course of the game. However, the Anatusian had been, at times, the only pair of friendly eyes and arms (assuming they were arms) during the long weeks in Kron's stronghold, and Kirk was inclined to let it cheat.

The Anatusian made an indecipherable noise, and Kirk said, kindly

"No, I'm afraid you can't move your queen – I've already taken it. That's why it's not on the board any more."

The Anatusian made another noise, less decipherable and louder.

"All right, then, I don't mind. Have the queen. And, by all means, move it twice. I'm not fussy."

The Anatusian repeated the strange noise, and this time accompanied it with a movement of what Kirk supposed was its head – a universal gesture which Kirk translated as "look over there". Wondering whether this was another diversionary tactic to give his opponent cover to steal a few more pieces, he looked up and saw Spock, watching him.

He froze and the two locked eyes. Kirk thought – _Oh,_ _it's bad; it's very, very bad –_ and he got to his feet slightly stiffly, tipping his king over as he did so and saluting the Anatusian.

"Congratulations, my friend. And thank you. May you find your way home soon." _And may it be a little more welcoming than mine, _he added silently.

The Vulcan turned as Kirk left the table and he followed him out of the room. In the corridor, Kirk said lightly, eyes noting every nuance in Spock's expression:

"Hello, Mr Spock. You are a sight for sore eyes. I was rather hoping they would send someone friendly to take me home. Do you qualify?"

"May I enquire after your health, Captain?" the Vulcan asked, ignoring him.

"Absolutely fine, thank you, Spock," he returned, uncomfortably aware of a small difficulty in breathing, but resolving not to mention it at this juncture. "And you? Is the ship in orbit?"

"Affirmative. However, sir, I would like to speak to you before we return, please. In private."

Kirk knew he had it coming. Bowing his head, he followed Spock into a side room. And the Vulcan turned.

"_You had no right."_

Kirk was absolutely certain he had never heard Spock use that voice before. Certainly not to him. Perhaps it should have warned him. But it was weeks too late. He had to play the cards he had dealt himself now.

"On the contrary, Mr Spock, I had every right."

"It was my right to protect you – it was my _job _to protect you. You were in no danger while I was Kron's hostage."

Spock seemed to tower over Kirk. Kirk had never been frightened of the Vulcan in his life, but now his breath was coming shorter and shorter and something seemed to have happened to his legs.

"I made a command decision. You would have done the same thing."

"I was not in command. It was my right – it was my duty to protect the Captain of the ship. You made that impossible for me. The Captain is indispensible. The First Officer is not."

Kirk said, desperately wishing for more control over his voice:

"But I didn't go to Kron as Captain of the _Enterprise, _Spock. It was a personal choice."

Spock came nearer.

"As Captain of the ship, you do not have that right."

Kirk's eyes blazed.

"Do not presume to tell me what rights I have. I claimed that right a long time ago. And I'm sorry if you can't live with it."

Spock came nearer still. He was terrifying, unmoving, Vulcan, ancient, forbidding. He said

"It was you who might not have been able to live with it. Did he touch you? Did he? _Did he?"_

Kirk said softly

"Why do you want to know, Spock?"

The dark eyes bored into him.

"The health of my Captain is my business."

"I haven't been your Captain for nearly three months. I said – why do you want to know? Are you sure it's not a personal question – I mean, a _very _personal question? Are you sure we aren't having a personal conversation here?"

So close now that he could feel Vulcan breath on his face.

"I am a Vulcan. I am not personally involved. _Did he touch you?"_

Fear and love and pity tangled in Kirk. He said, softly

"Did you get my message, Spock?"

"_Did he touch you?" _That voice again.

Kirk's hands were fisted by his sides, his jaws clenched tight around his mouth with every effort not to weaken, not to give in, not to dissolve at the proximity of almost-warmth and almost-comfort, while the long, hard weeks tugged at every limb, at every muscle, at his very bones. But he would not give in – he would not let physical weakness erode this moment, he would not –

He lost. Head to toe, he began to shake. He said, surrendering on every level

"_You touch me, Spock. _Now. I want you to touch me."

Spock said, very quietly, his face millimetres from Kirk's

"No."

And then Kirk's body took over, as cumulated shock staked its claim. Teeth chattering, he forced his eyes to go on meeting Spock's, praying that the Vulcan would leave in the next seven seconds, which was the length of time he calculated his legs would remain upright, held himself straight –

And Spock moved. Just a millimetre, but it was enough. His mouth closed over Kirk's and it was like a blow, like an invasion. Kirk went down before Vulcan strength, Vulcan heat, Vulcan anger, and knew himself no match. Spock's hands threaded through his hair and held his face, not gently, imprisoning him. And he was blindingly aware, throughout the so-strange touch of Spock's mouth on his, that this was punishment, not love – that Spock was taking, not giving. He hopelessly willed his body, with all the strength left to him, not to let Spock sense his sudden, painful arousal.

The kiss lasted forever, or perhaps one half of an Earth minute. And then Spock released his Captain and stepped back.

The two eyed each other, both breathing hard. There was silence. Kirk lifted his chin, the last of his reserves coming to his aid against the one person he had let past his defences in the past three months. And Spock's anger wavered for the first time as he met the familiar, stubborn hazel scrutiny.

"I guess that makes us even, Commander," Kirk said, pleasantly. "Let's go." And, from somewhere, found the ability to walk out past Spock to where the transporter beam was waiting for them.


	5. Chapter 5

Is a kiss empirical evidence if it isn't actually a kiss? In order to constitute empirical evidence, does it have to be a gift and not a punishment?

No answer to this question emerged from days of fruitless soul-searching by Kirk in the weeks following Starbase 19, and the kiss was never filed in his dossier. Instead, every time he thought about it, he relived with painful clarity the strange touch of Spock's lips on his, and his own, betraying rush of feeling.

Kirk knew that Spock would not transfer off the _Enterprise _for the simple reason that so little time remained of the five year mission. No one, let alone a Vulcan whose views about privacy were on a par with those of the Pope about the eucharist, would at one stroke capsize the homecoming awaiting the flagship vessel and open himself up to the curious gossip such an ill-timed departure would provoke. This was small comfort to Kirk, who did not need a Vulcan to calculate the odds against Spock agreeing to his plan to share a lease on an apartment in San Francisco. Kirk, as McCoy had said to Spock, rushed in where angels feared to tread, but the captain was with the angels on this one and even he understood that some suggestions were just not worth the trouble of being made.

Despite knowing that the end of the mission was in all likelihood all that he had left, that Kirk had only weeks to change Spock's mind, he avoided serious conversations with the Vulcan. He felt paralysed by a sense of helplessness, by Spock's changed demeanour and above all by the physical memory of the kiss which was a blow and a rejection and not a kiss but which he held deep within him at all times and especially when face to face with his First Officer.

Sickbay, where he had been confined by McCoy for three days after his return, had been particularly difficult. McCoy had given him a complete physical, put him under for some minor procedures, given him various antibiotics and painkillers and flatly forbidden him to return to his quarters – more, Kirk suspected, to make the doctor feel better than because it was really medically warranted. McCoy had clearly been expecting far worse. Kirk thought wryly that McCoy's and Spock's bedtime reading – Kron's psych profile – would have been precisely the same as his own, last time he had been on the ship, and for once he put up little fight, in part because he understood some of what his friends had gone through and that one level he owed it to the doctor. But in fact, he was not sorry to have the time in bed – if he shared McCoy's surprise and relief that he had been spared the worst of Kron's reputed delinquencies, he was still exhausted, enervated and battered. And Sickbay had been a haven from having to dance around Spock all day.

However Spock, of course, had come to visit him. Not as he once would have, to play chess, to exchange teases at McCoy's expense, even (on some occasions) to touch Kirk's hand or arm in the way that he had had of seeming to need to reassure both Kirk and himself that his Captain had, once more, survived intact. Instead, he made reports, enquired respectfully after Kirk's health and (to Kirk's secret fury) clearly conferred with McCoy on Kirk's injuries, to satisfy himself that to a large extent the nightmare had not been substantiated.

That all this happened while Kirk was lying in bed, in the first day wearing very little under the biobed coverings, made him extremely uncomfortable. But it got no better when he was released. He felt exposed, humiliated, guilty and rejected. And terrified.

He was haunted by a cold fear he had never known in all the weeks of captivity at Kron's hands. He remembered the words spoken by Spock and T'Pring at the time of Spock's _pon farr _– "_never and always touching"_ – because it was not that he and Spock didn't speak, and not even that they spoke only about ship's business, it was just that there was an invisible barrier that, whilst permitting all normal interaction, filtered out only the special connection, the link that defined his relationship with Spock, that had made them what they were. What others had referred to as the best command rapport in the Fleet, Kirk had simply known as the experience of living in someone else's head. He knew this was not truly the case, knew that Spock had never once used his abilities to intrude on Kirk's thoughts, knew about Vulcan bonds and knew this was not what they shared. It was simply that it turned out that they had each been made in such a way that the sum of their two parts had made one exact whole, so each had always known what the other was thinking by reference to what was in their own head. And since Starbase 19, Kirk had become achingly aware of the spaces in his mind which Spock had once filled. That was how he knew the Vulcan had withdrawn from him.

Once, Spock had agreed to play chess. They had played largely in silence but with the occasional companionable comment which Kirk had, contrarily, found even more painful than complete lack of communication. Kirk had tipped his king in acknowledgement that the game was Spock's, and Spock had nodded and thanked Kirk gravely for the game. There was no opening for Kirk to make more of the moment and he hadn't dared to ask the score, even though on one level, deep and unacknowledged within him, he knew it would be his last game with Spock. And once, Kirk, reading reports at his station in a quiet watch on the bridge, in no small part in order to take up time once spent trading teases with his Vulcan, had laughed out loud and said "Spock!" without thinking, and then came back to the present, and had no choice but to follow through. "Listen to this," he said, taking a breath so sharp it almost hurt, "the quarterly report from the Iotians mentions that they have noted the emergence of a new cult card game called _fizzbin,"_ and Spock had lifted his eyes to his and they were shining in the old way. Kirk caught his breath but then the moment passed and Spock said, distantly, "I am wanted in the science laboratory, Captain", and left the bridge.

Oddly, the person with whom Spock was prepared to spend time was McCoy. And Kirk, for whom the completion of each twenty-four hour period had suddenly become a task akin to climbing a mountain without an oxygen supply - involving a level of stamina and a pain threshold never before needed in his career or even his life, was nevertheless able to recognise that Spock, wherever he had gone to in his retreat from Kirk, was hurting badly and he was glad for the Vulcan to have this comfort, respected it, and refrained from asking McCoy to tell him what was going on in Spock's head. Only once did he break this rule, one evening after Kirk had entered the rec room, seen Spock and McCoy sitting together, hesitated, turned and walked out and McCoy caught him later that night alone in the observatory, apology written all over the blue Georgian eyes. Kirk said, instantly

"No, Bones. Honestly, I am glad – glad that he has you, glad you are there for him."

"If it helps, Jim," McCoy said, slowly, "I think spending time with me is a sort of way of saying goodbye to you."

Kirk laughed, a sound entirely without humour.

"Frankly, no, that doesn't help at all." And then, as if he couldn't help himself, he said

"What _is _it, Bones, _what is it_? What did I do?"

And McCoy said, helplessly

"I think he thinks that somehow, at one go, you've proved to him that he can't trust you and he can't trust himself either. And he can't live with that."

And Kirk let out a spark of anger, and said "Just words, Bones, it means nothing" and they talked of other things.

McCoy found himself wanting to tell Jim of that night in the officer's mess while Kirk was still missing, that look of betrayal in Spock's eyes, his own understanding that Spock was coming to terms for the first time with his feelings for Kirk and with the vulnerability that love brings, the sense of helplessness and hurt – and was rejecting the chaos it brought in its wake. But he found himself oddly unable. He felt caught in the middle, and uncomfortable with it, as a man whose sympathies had always been solidly with Kirk. They were no less so, in this instance, because McCoy was himself too human to face Spock's particular dilemmas and choices – also, because McCoy, like them all, could see what was coming and what it would mean to Kirk at a time when the mission would be over and he would be at his most vulnerable. But he felt a deep and wrenching pity for the Vulcan - the flash of tenderness he had felt for Spock when they had heard the news that the hostages had been released had stayed with him, and McCoy was keeping confidences.

News came (greeted by Kirk with a wry twist of the lips and a bitter taste in his mouth –one report he did not share with Spock) that the Dolganin paradise had checked out (_good to know that someone else can have an idyllic holiday there, _he thought) and then it was the last month, the last week of the mission and Kirk had set up meetings with all senior staff. He spent hours with Uhura, talking about promotion, her desire to take leave and learn more languages, stay with her family, get to know them a bit; with Sulu, who had already been offered a role on another ship, who felt torn by his loyalty to Kirk and to the _Enterprise – _and whom Kirk told not to be fool and take the posting. This was the first crack in the defences, the first insinuation that he knew his own time was up, and Sulu was very quiet. He talked to Chekhov about command school; Scott about the latest warp core breakthrough that Scotty wanted to include as part of the _Enterprise _refit. And he talked to McCoy about the Fabrini discoveries and about some peaceful time on Earth, making a difference to more people than the difficult and exasperating command team of the best ship in Starfleet.

Neither he nor Spock could avoid the last of these meetings, and when Spock buzzed at his quarters at 1900 hours one evening, there were only two days of the mission left. Kirk had thought the Vulcan would be silent, would stay strictly away from the personal and be entirely unforthcoming without persistent questioning on his part, but he surprised his Captain by starting:

"I must apologise for the assault on your person for which I was responsible on Starbase 19. You would be entirely correct in thinking that this apology is long overdue and that, too, is a cause for regret on my part. I am, of course, prepared to submit myself to whatever disciplinary proceedings you think appropriate."

Well, it was good to have the confirmation finally that it had, indeed, been intended as an assault and not a kiss, though Kirk briskly, swallowing over the sensation of being punched in the gut. At the same time, something in Kirk, who had spent the better part of five years debating vocabulary with his First Officer, refused for once to debate Spock's choice of words, refused to categorise the Vulcan's action as anything other than, indeed, an assault which was clearly what had been intended. There was his empirical evidence. Perhaps he should start keeping another dossier - Dossier B: evidence that Kirk was simply projecting feelings onto Spock, that he was a human encumbrance to his First Officer, an embarrassment. Another part of him, the part which seemed sometimes to work entirely independently of his brain in the most inappropriate of circumstances, wondered about the paperwork for disciplinary proceedings for kissing ones Commanding Officer.

He said lightly, "Perhaps I asked for it,", and moved on quickly, in the manner of enquiring politely over afternoon tea as to the precise form of execution awaiting, to ask about Spock's plans for after the mission.

And that was when Spock said:

"There is a faculty on Vulcan where I have sought admission and been accommodated. It is called Gol, in vernacular Vulcan, and students –"

Kirk had lifted his head swiftly, the muffled paralysis of the past four weeks gone in a heartbeat.

"I know what Gol is," he said sharply. "Spock – please! You can't do this. You mustn't – really, you must not. I know I should have spoken to you after Starbase 19, after Kron – and you should have spoken to me, too – but don't do this. For God's sake, don't do it."

Spock looked at him then, really looked at him for the first time since he had stepped away in the little room on Starbase 19 and Kirk, who had spent 100% of his waking hours since that moment hoping Spock would look at him, for the first time since he had known Spock wished for cover. Spock's eyes were full of churning misery, hopeless frustration and buried anger. Kirk flinched – and then the moment passed and the eyes were once more opaque.

"I will not be a hostage for you or anyone else," Spock said flatly. Inasmuch as it is possible to speak from behind an impenetrable mask with a shuttered expression and eyes which do not recognise the person in front of you as your inseparable companion of four point seven years - inasmuch as it is possible to do this and at the same time speak from the heart, Kirk recognised that Spock's words came from very deep within him. Cold panic threatened to choke the Captain, and he remembered, suddenly and with cold clarity, Spock's creed of non-violence, and Spock's pacifism sat in his head alongside the fact that he, Kirk, had endangered his own life and made Spock complicit in that, and then goaded and provoked his First Officer into a blind fury and an invasive personal assault. Because that was what Jim Kirk did, that was how he operated.

He blurted out,

"But it's even not as though this was the only time – it's happened before. Why is this special? I've been even closer to death to try to protect you –" and knew instantly that the reference to Spock's _pon farr _was almost certainly a hideous tactical error for a master strategist to have made.

It was. Spock retreated even more, if possible. Between stiff lips he said

"A difference in that particular circumstance was the lack of information available to you in relation to the possible outcome of the ceremony - a circumstance for which I take full responsibility and did so at the time. But if you would prefer to cite those events, I can only put to you that they add weight to my argument. Further, together with my assault on you on Vulcan, the incident on Starbase 19 only demonstrates that I cannot function within those parameters. I cannot. I will not."

Kirk said gently:

"But that is how it works, Spock, that is how it is for everyone, the ties that bind. I hate to break it to you but I am scarcely the only person on this ship, let alone elsewhere, for whom you are hostage. And it's as true for you as for me, is it not - if it had been me on Dolganin?"

Spock said stubbornly:

"I do not wish to be hostage for anyone at all. And as for what you hypothesise, that is not a comparable circumstance. You are my Commanding Officer."

"As you wish," Kirk said, through the sensation of being knifed, mentally adding the comment to Dossier B but continuing, with increasing desperation, "But we're alive, Spock, We're both alive. For God's sake, your _pon farr _is passed, Kron is gone - and we're both still here. Doesn't that count for something?"

And Spock looked at him with that closed anger, and said, quietly:

"Captain, may I ask you a question?" And, continuing at Kirk's nod, "If, knowing my views as you do now, you had in a hypothetical instance the opportunity to revisit decisions made at Polus 7, what would you do?"

Proof, had Kirk wanted it or been looking for it, that Spock knew him far, far too well. Proof, plus another slug in the guts, because Kirk could recognise a killer blow when he saw one and he knew he had lost. He remembered the three days Spock was in Kron's hands, the sick terror, the corrosive guilt. He remembered the extraordinary joy of the last four years and even the awareness the past month of Spock's silent, estranged presence on the ship – knew that to be a blessing above worldly riches in comparison to the emptiness which was the alternative. And so he looked back at Spock and gave him the only thing he could – the respect of an honest answer.

"In that hypothetical instance, I would change absolutely nothing," he said, slowly. "Even if it were, as indeed it seems to have been, at the cost of losing your friendship, I would always choose your life. Every time. Sorry, Commander. That's just how it is."

There was a silence, in which Kirk could hear the end of all things. And then, unexpectedly, a small opening appeared, a chink in the wall, as Spock turned to his Captain and spoke, perhaps for the first time since Starbase 19, directly to him, unshielded and frank.

"Captain, please understand. This is what I want. It is a better way for me. Can you not see that? All things being equal, I would prefer to have your respect for my choices."

Because Spock asked it of him, Kirk tried very hard to think of a universe in which he would respect Spock's choice to be walled up in a Vulcan monastery and have his memories of Kirk erased. He concluded within 1.02 nanoseconds that it would take a leap of imagination entirely beyond him and that any efforts in that regard would be an illogical waste of his time. Swiftly dodging the question, he asked

"Spock. Why fight so hard to be a member of only one world? Why not fight instead to be the best of both? You know" (quietly, almost to himself, but knowing Vulcan ears would hear) "that's what I believe you are."

"You give me too much credit, Captain." The tone was extraordinarily removed from what they had been to each other – worse than remote, it was almost a social courtesy, a polite rebuttal of a compliment from a source not sufficiently familiar to be sincere. Which left Kirk only one card to play.

"Then what about us?" he said, heart in mouth, not quite believing he'd actually said it.

"I do not understand the question," the voice said, very remotely indeed.

Nothing to lose then. Deep breath.

"You and me. Doesn't deep space exploration give you a sense of perspective? Do you realise that in all the universe, in all those millions and billions of worlds, there is only one of you and one of me - do you realise the staggering, staggering odds (oh please, Spock, just once, please don't quote them to me) against us ever meeting in the first place? Don't you realise other people don't have this? Other people don't finish each other's sentences and fit around each other's spaces - other people don't discover a piece of themselves they didn't know was missing in someone from a different species. Don't you realise that it's a blessing, that it's special, that it's a gift, that we're supposed to treasure it, not squander it? That it's wholly irreplaceable - that neither of us will ever find it again? Are you really - truly - prepared to throw it away? Or am I wrong? Tell me if I presume, if I'm all wrong about this. And if I'm not, tell me how you can walk away from it. From _me_."

The pause was infinitesimal, and Kirk had given up hope, anyway.

"It has been an honour to serve with you, sir," Spock said quietly, and stood to leave.

Blood rushed into Kirk's face and then receded at the same time as the faintest resonance of Spock's footsteps faded from the room, leaving the Captain alone.

* * *

Vulcans do not lie and Spock had not told Kirk he was leaving for Vulcan on the transport scheduled for 1300 hours the day after the press conference which followed _Enterprise's_ historic docking, It was, however, the case that Kirk had made clear his intention to see Spock off on that shuttle and equally the case that Spock had unaccountably failed to inform him of alternative arrangements he had made with a private shuttle leaving earlier the same morning. Some things were quite impossible, and allowing Kirk to say goodbye – in public or private – was simply out of the question.

Sitting now in the small vessel and approaching his home planet for the first time since beaming up after Kirk's body (the irony of which failed to escape his erstwhile First Officer), Spock wondered how, the nearer he drew to his native desert climate, the colder he felt. He felt encased in ice, head to foot; illogically, he was certain he would never feel warm again.

He had underestimated Kirk, not by any means for the first time, though it seemed for the last. It had simply never occurred to him that Kirk would have heard of Gol. It had been Spock's intention – again, without actual fabrication – to leave his Captain under the impression that Gol was some form of VSA offshoot, perhaps even with the implication that a return to Starfleet was not out of the question. But this was the man who had spoken the word "_t'hy'la_" in a farewell message recorded in orbit around Polus 7 – an inclusion which, despite all the other events of the past four months, had occupied one not inconsiderable part of Spock's thoughts ever since. Why did Kirk know so much about Vulcan? When and for what purpose had he made the effort? And how deep was his knowledge – what did he understand about the significance of that word and what had he meant by it?

It was irrelevant now. He knew he had hurt Kirk and damaged the fabric of their friendship beyond forgiveness or repair in the conversation which followed his reference to Gol, Kirk's appalled reaction having forced him, in order to free himself, to use weapons he had not contemplated, not planned. However, he had no choice and no regrets - Kirk's words, ringing in his mind, were ironically just as true for him as for Kirk: _I would change absolutely nothing. Even at the cost of losing your friendship._

With McCoy and in the privacy of his own quarters, he had considered endlessly the implications of Kirk's decision on Polus 7, his feeling of being wrong-footed, the sense of being dragged into a place where he found himself a danger to those who mattered to him, the imbalance to what he had treasured above all – his partnership with Kirk in command of the ship. Perhaps he could have got past all that, perhaps he could even have steeled himself against the loss of control, the anger, the grief and the terrible revelation during those sixty two days of just how vital he had allowed Kirk to become to him. But in all this silent dialogue, he always fetched up against the same place, and that was Starbase 19.

Because Spock's last, but insurmountable, difficulty in staying on Earth was the difference between what Starbase 19 had meant to him and what it had meant to Kirk. He had, he knew, meant to hurt Kirk – not to hurt him physically, but somehow to impress upon him the depth of Spock's anger, his fury at the helplessness which Kirk had visited upon him; to re-empower himself at the cost of a fragile Kirk – perhaps even to reclaim the human from Kron. He was not remotely proud of any of this. But it was nevertheless true that he had also meant to kiss him.

And you would have to be blind and deaf to spend five years with Jim Kirk and not know what a kiss meant to him. More than a cup of coffee, less than a game of chess, was Spock's estimation. And the identity of the other party in the exchange would be of corresponding value – in fact, Spock prided himself on being less replaceable as a chess opponent than in relation to what he had instigated on Starbase 19. In any event, Spock had stood with Kirk in his arms and felt his Captain immobile, resistant against him. Which was not surprising, under the circumstances.

Spock going to Gol would be better for Kirk. He would move on. And Spock would return to the life he should have had, which he was equipped to lead, and where he would cease to endanger those he cared about.

As the shuttle landed on Vulcan, Spock finally let go of the last of his anger. He had thought this would be the beginning of peace. But what swept in behind it was desolation.

* * *

And on the other side of the sector, Kron surveyed his new home on Dolganin and smiled.

He was a renegade at heart and always had been, even before the death of his son. But working with the Klingon High Command in this instance was turning out perfectly. He had managed to inject the implant into Kirk, who had been sufficiently roughed up under his care that he had been completely oblivious at the time to Kron's makeshift surgery. True, the plan had required him not to carry out exactly what he had wanted to do with the human, but all things come to those who wait and besides, he had enjoyed his sixty two days.

And now, Kirk was back on Earth, where the KHC had said he would be. Back on Earth, and carrying everywhere he went, undetectable to any instrument, Kron's own personal homing device – and a means of neutralising all security between Kirk and the twin implant in Kron's own body.

The KHC would have what they wanted and he would have Kirk. But other things were in motion first. And Dolganin was really very pleasant. And he had all the time in the world.


	6. Chapter 6

Jim Kirk's strongest emotion, on hearing Uhura's gasp and turning to see Spock framed in the doorway of the turbolift, was despair.

It was not by any means his only emotion. In fact, in the very small amount of time during which he saw Spock, allowed his brain to catch up with his eyes and process what had sent them into denial - and stood there able to do absolutely nothing but repeat Spock's name and (which was no mean feat) remain standing, Kirk was distinctly aware, almost like a list, of shock, joy, relief, concern, pain and bewilderment. And love, of course. Love and despair.

The reason he was secretly proud of remaining standing was that the two strongest temptations were either to give in to the deafening, shattering shock and subside as unobtrusively as possible back into the centre seat or (even worse) to obey every physical instinct in his body which was screaming to move towards Spock, to be closer, to touch. _Congratulations, Admiral, _he thought._ Earth is under imminent threat of destruction and you have no apparent way of saving her; you are not wholly in control of your Exec Officer, your warp drive or your emotional life, but your own body will – just about – do as you command. It's important to celebrate the small successes of life._

But as he watched the short exchange between Spock and Decker, watched (almost unbelievingly) Spock at his station – not his old station, of course, the reconfigured station, but still with a thousand ghosts conjured from a thousand lost days – it was despair that registered most loudly, almost drowning out everything else. Because nothing had changed. And he realised in that crowded moment that he wanted change. He wanted – needed – to move away from the muffling, bitter loss and pain of the past three years. He didn't want to keep wanting Spock, to be sucked back (even if had it been on offer) into their old games of advance and retreat and denial, was terrified that Spock's return would drag him back to the near paralysis of the days immediately after his departure for Gol. And, with all the unanswered questions and mysteries about Spock's return, one thing was crystal clear from his face. He had not returned for Kirk.

Kirk had done his share of soul-searching in his years on Earth. He could look back now with a sort of wry humour at his notion of sharing an apartment with Spock in San Francisco and playing games of chess. It had taken Spock's capture on Dolganin, those sixty two days with Kron, the touch of Spock's mouth on Starbase 19 and the lacerating wound of Spock's rejection, but he had come to terms with what Spock truly was to him. He knew that no one else would ever mean the same; he remembered, often, as though they had been spoken through some sort of grim prophecy, his farewell words to Spock "_Neither of us will ever find it again_." It seemed that he was so made, that he had to comply with his own predictions.

And yet. And yet.

He had ridden out the worst of the shock of losing him. The first year had been the darkest. It had taken three months before he had stopped calling a very patient and clearly sympathetic Amanda on Vulcan, stopped asking her to pass messages to Spock, stopped asking her advice on whether he should come, what he could do, what she thought Spock's intentions were. (Amanda's views on Gol had been about the only bright spot in those awful weeks. It still provoked a reluctant grin in him to remember her carefully framed comments on the institution of the Vulcan Masters.) It had taken nearly six months before he stopped turning to search for Spock, at his San Francisco apartment, at Fleet HQ, even though these were places he had never been with the Vulcan. (Once, on sighting in a crowd a tall back, dark hair, unmistakeably Vulcan ears, he had actually followed it some four hundred metres down a street – at first on autopilot and then in growing stunned hope and fear that the physical laws of the universe had taken a holiday and it was actually Spock, Spock deciding not to stay at Gol, Spock coming back to him. And the back had stopped and greeted an acquaintance and Kirk saw that it had turned into an attaché at the Vulcan embassy. And was hit by a wave of humiliation and misery so profound he had simply gone straight home and sat in a chair looking out of the window with his head in his hands, all night. That had been the worst time.)

It had taken nearly twelve months for him to wake in the morning without his first sensation being a feeling of crashing, sickening vertigo as he realised his loss afresh, all over again. But then there had been Lori to wake up to instead, and although he knew Lori had used him, so he had also used her, because he had known damn well from the start that the best she could be to him was sticking plaster. And sticking plaster gets a bad press, he had reflected – it may not be the same as a new arm or as laser surgery, but sometimes it stops you looking at the wound for long enough that at least you can think of other things. And there is always the chance, if you think about other things for long enough, that you begin to move on.

Because the truth was that almost worse than losing Spock had been the sense, over those years, of losing himself. And now that he was finally back in the right place, back in space, back on the bridge – in terrible danger, yes, and with an extraordinary responsibility, but he was used to that – Spock's return threatened the very foundations of that fragile equilibrium, made a mockery of every hard won step on the road. And he knew Spock – knew him very, very well, and he knew what was in Spock's face promised nothing of happiness for Kirk.

_Let's test the theory, _he said to himself, with his own particular brand of self-directed sardonic humour, and said out loud, clearly, as Spock headed into the turbolift:

"Mr Spock! Welcome aboard."

_Still only one of you and one of me, Spock._

_You left without saying goodbye, but hello would be nice._

_How was chess on Gol, Spock?_

_Have you forgotten, Spock? Have you? Did it work?_

_Spock._

He wasn't totally sure Spock couldn't hear him, and he was absolutely sure Spock would pretend he couldn't if he could. And Spock hesitated for less time than, a lifetime ago, he had once hesitated after the same appeal, at the end of that last meeting with Kirk, and then he went on into the turbolift and the doors closed behind him.

* * *

Kirk's moment of revelation came as he guiltily watched Decker with the Ilia probe.

Decker, he reflected, was going to find it damn hard to amass empirical evidence that the probe had any feelings at all.

She looked like his navigator, looked like Decker's lover but that was as far as it went. Anything else came down to the odd moment of programming malfunction and good old human emotional transference. He understood, though, on a very profound and personal level, that Decker would not give up. Decker would lay himself out – for humiliation, rejection, for failure – and the probe, at the end of the day, would still be the probe. It wasn't even the probe's fault. That's just what probes do.

If Decker were really, really lucky, the probe might say "It has been an honour to serve with you, sir." But Decker would be fooling himself if he thought it would bother to say goodbye.

(And he remembered, suddenly, Will telling him, months before the Vger mission and before their own friendship changed, that Ilia hadn't said goodbye, either, after the end of their affair. _What is it about Will and me, anyway? _he thought. _Same ship, same mistakes. Same stupid predilections for getting hurt in the same stupid way. Are we the best that Starfleet could rustle up in the face of the threat of total annihilation?)_

_She will never love you back, Will. Not the way you want. _

Did the probe find Decker a human embarrassment? Did the probe refuse to entertain the idea of having personal conversations with Will? Would the probe be totally unbothered if Decker arranged to have an idyllic holiday alone with it on an uninhabited paradise planet and if a deranged Klingon then started kidnapping civilians so that Will's plans had to be abandoned?

If Decker left the probe a farewell message, in circumstances where the two were likely never to see each other again, and if he admitted in that message what he felt for the probe, would the probe (assuming the message had been sufficiently interesting to remember or even to play in the first place), in the event of Will's safe return, simply ignore the confession and never refer to it? Would the probe use assault instead of physical tenderness because it just didn't want human affection? Would the probe reject Decker's protection in the line of fire because it configured its relationship with him in terms of job description and not friendship? And in the final analysis, in order to free itself to go back to Vger and de-clutter its programming from any infestation of memories of the Deltan navigator, would the probe see the most efficient and logical course of action as being to explain clearly to Decker quite how meaningless their interaction had been? And ask Decker to respect its choices?

And – this was the real question for Kirk – how much longer would Decker keep trying?

How much longer would Kirk?

Decker was following Ilia's back down a San Francisco street but she would turn, she would turn and he would see it wasn't really her. And he, Kirk, had been following Spock's back for far longer than that moment in the street two years ago when he realised he'd been fixated on a chimera. It hadn't been the Vulcan attaché's fault that he wasn't Spock, and when you thought about it, it hadn't really been Spock's fault that he wasn't Spock, either. But the truth was that following either of them was just about as illogical as following the other.

Just because he looks like someone you love, it doesn't mean he is.

He couldn't do it any more. He wouldn't. He was tired and feeling old and life was short. He would see the mission through and find a way of disengaging from Spock – not that this was likely to prove the hardest challenge of the mission, perhaps on a par with persuading his father Sarek not to take a ride at a children's funfair. He had a sudden flashback to Elba ll, to telling Garth that Spock was his brother, to the rush of warmth that heralded Spock's unexpected agreement – gloriously Vulcan in formulation and entirely unashamedly open and public. He felt dizzy, slightly nauseous.

McCoy was looking at him oddly; he said: "Jim? Jim – are you OK?"

"Fine, Bones, fine. Just need a drink," he said, briefly.

In the head, he took a greedy gulp of water and rinsed out a sour taste in his mouth, swirling the water round and wishing he didn't feel as though he were betraying something precious, of incalculable value. ("_It's a blessing, it's special, it's a gift; we're supposed to treasure it, not squander it._" Had he said that?) Something which he should value, guard, even if Spock didn't.

But I'm tired of being the only one who does, he thought.

And went back to the bridge to learn of Spock's unscheduled departure through Airlock Four.

* * *

If Kirk had felt despair on the bridge, what he felt in Sickbay was anger.

He hadn't been particularly proud of the despair; he was downright ashamed of the anger – and particularly because Spock, holding on to his hand as though for dear life, was bound to be able to sense it. But there was nothing much he could do about it.

"This simple feeling..." Spock said, and dark questions rose, unbidden, in Kirk's mind

_How simple, Spock, exactly?_

_Simple enough even for a human to understand, or only a Vulcan?_

_Simple enough to block out the sun for three years? To keep you awake at night? To mean you can't play chess any more? _

_Simple enough to make you pretend to be talking to yourself in the coldest hours of the night because it's better than admitting that you're talking to someone who isn't actually there?_

_Simple enough to understand that the continued existence of the object of that feeling is worth the occasional sacrifice – any sacrifice?_

_Simple enough to survive Gol?_

_That simple?_

_Too simple?_

But it was still Spock – _Spock! - _ holding his hand, and Kirk's anger sat uncomfortably alongside other very different feelings. He managed a shadowy smile and pressed Spock's hand, hoping that the Vulcan would understand what he himself could not, then gently disengaged and went back to the bridge.

* * *

Back on the ship, en route for Earth after the unscheduled detour for Scotty's shakedown "thataway", Kirk stood on the observation deck, eyes fixed unseeing on the stars. Under his feet, he felt his ship turn and glide, turn and glide, but it was a false security, a false redemption- he knew she was not his to keep, any more than Spock was. A loan, not a promise.

It was somehow because of Decker that he knew the _Enterprise _was not coming back to him; at least, not yet, not now that he had taken the ship from Decker and Decker was gone. He had yet to come to terms with what had happened to Will and Ilia. He felt a wrenching guilt over their deaths, particularly Decker's, but above all he felt transfixed by what had happened, by the irony of Decker's sacrifice given Kirk's own earlier reflections about the Ilia probe and Spock. Ilia, he could not help feeling bitterly, had after all been hostage for Decker, even after everything which made her essentially Ilia had been stripped away. As he had once said to Spock – "_That is how it is for everyone, the ties that bind"_. And what was it he had said into a recorded message for Spock, what felt like a thousand years ago, before the hostage swap on Polus? "E_veryone has certain rights, and one of them is to put yourself in the line of fire for the people you love."_ Except him, because Spock had never wanted him to have those rights. With grim humour, he imagined the probe turning away from Decker at that moment which had been critical for them, for Earth, for all of humanity – turning, with Spock's stubborn gaze and using those words "I will not be hostage for you". But it seemed that even hunks of metal allowed themselves to be loved. It was only Spock who didn't. Or perhaps, not by Kirk.

On the positive side, Spock's own revelation, whatever it proved to be, suggested he might be prepared to pull back from the Gol severity and distance he had shown since he arrived, and if he were going to stay in Starfleet, as seemed likely, they perhaps might even become friends again. Kirk had not the slightest idea what that might look like, but he supposed they could be friends. _Friends_, he thought, was nice. Not as good as _living in each other's heads _perhaps, but a real improvement on _I do not understand the question _not to mention _ I am not prepared to say goodbye to you_. (Although Spock had never said that last line, to be fair. It could just as easily be the case that Spock had been perfectly content to say goodbye in principle, but it had simply slipped his mind at the last minute because something else had come up.)

If Will Decker, who had loved Ilia so much, could merge with a Deltan-shaped collection of molecule-sized multi-processor chips in place of the passion he had experienced with the original navigator, presumably he, Kirk, could manage the odd game of chess with a Vulcan who had once kissed him, then told him he meant nothing to him and had then attempted to have him brainwashed from his memory.

Provided they stayed away from personal conversations, of course.

There was a sound behind him, and he turned to see McCoy and Spock regarding him.

"Gentlemen," he said, pleasantly. "Forgive me, I was star-gazing. But they seem to be where I left them - all present and accounted for."

McCoy stepped back fractionally as Spock stirred and said "Admiral –", and Kirk said quickly,

"Spock. How are you feeling?"

"I am quite recovered, thank you. I was hoping we could speak." It was not quite a question, not quite a plea. It must, reflected McCoy, have cost Spock dearly. Which was a shame, because McCoy would put serious money on it being a complete waste of effort. And he was right.

Kirk ran a hand over his face and said tiredly

"It's really late, Spock. I'm shattered. And I have to beam down very early tomorrow for this debriefing. Let's take a raincheck."

"They'll give you the ship back now, won't they, Jim?" this from McCoy.

"I don't think so, Bones. At least, not immediately. But it's OK. I'll let you know how it goes. Sleep well, both of you," and was gone.

Spock felt him go rather than turning to watch. The motion of Kirk's hand over his forehead, which seemed to brush Spock aside at the same time as his own hair, had felt like a physical blow to the Vulcan, entirely unexpected. He remembered Kirk three years ago, the declaration that what was between them was irreplaceable - but he also remembered turning away from that appeal, and wondered if Kirk had felt then what he was feeling now. The truth was that, even at Gol, much as he had set his mind 100% of the time on the straightforward and eminently achievable target of never thinking about his former captain (and succeeded a shameful 23.2% of the time - which was, coincidentally, precisely the amount of time Spock calculated he had spent asleep at night during the years of studying the Kolinahr discipline), his awareness of the connection to Kirk, of his own significance to the human, had been like a solid layer of support running through the substrata of his consciousness throughout the Gol years and long before. Even if he never spoke to him again (as he had assumed would probably – 96.7% probably – be the case), the very existence of Kirk in his life had provided a mooring point (if unexpected), a balance (if illogical) and now - the hand brushing him away, the brusque exit , and something in Spock's foundations shook, ominously.

McCoy, watching some this on his face, said gently "Give him time, Spock. And he's right, you should get some sleep. Tomorrow is a whole new day."

"What you refer to as tomorrow," Spock said, precisely "by the Earth definition started some three point two six hours ago and is neither whole nor new." And he turned to follow Kirk out of the room.

It is illogical to consider that the passing of time beyond the demarcation of the start of a new defined period of twenty four Earth hours is likely to make any difference one way or the other to any particular chain of events – which meant that not only was McCoy's optimism misplaced but that so perhaps was his own rather different assumption on the probability of what the demarcation in question would bring.

What was even more illogical was that Spock, walking slowly to his assigned quarters, found himself regretting that if, as seemed quite possible, his friendship with Kirk could not be resumed, he would never have the opportunity of telling the Admiral that at the end of the five year mission, Kirk had led in their two-man chess league by a total of precisely eleven games, including the last game of all in which he had been the victor, the night before Spock had gone to Dolganin.


	7. Chapter 7

It was odd how much life could change in a week and yet remain fundamentally the same, Kirk reflected. Here was his apartment, his office, Starfleet HQ, just as it had been just before, in fact, his last conversation with Nogura.

The debriefing had been unexpectedly straightforward – at least, right up until the end. Nogura (even Komack) had managed to strike the right note of being warm and congratulatory without being overly effusive which, considering the fate of Decker and Ilia, eased the situation for Kirk considerably. The only other person present at the meeting was a junior officer, Lieutenant Stevens, whom he had initially thought was from marketing but relaxed when she was introduced as Nogura's aide. He recalled the terrible tension of the end of the five year mission and wondered, in retrospect, how much of his reaction to being grounded had been having to deal, the first year, with an overdose of media hype, which HQ looked to be controlling better this time. He didn't ask for permanent reassignment to himself of the _Enterprise_; it wasn't the right time for him or for them and he knew it. Nogura suggested he take some leave and he declined, politely – following a strong gut instinct that said now, _now, _when he felt empowered and energised and himself again, this was the time to go back to work and, this time, find himself there properly, make a go of it.

He thought Nogura understood, but perhaps this was just more transference. He must get out of that habit.

To his astonishment, Komack said, just as he was preparing himself to be dismissed,

"Good thing your Vulcan came back, Jim."

"Spock is not –" Kirk began.

"We can make use of him pretty much anywhere, of course, but I'm assigning him to your team, as of today." Komack sat back, satisfied, evidently waiting to be thanked by a stunned Kirk.

He was aware of a whole range of reactions to this extraordinary pronouncement, starting with the understanding that Komack was actually trying to do him a favour, and the irony that, the one time he tried to do so, he was so very, very wide of the mark. However, his wry reflections on Komack were dwarfed by his horror at the idea of the assignment. It was the very last thing Spock would want. And if there were any chance, any chance at all for Spock and him – to rebuild, to try to reach out to each other – it would have to be slow and it would have to be careful. Not only would that be impossible within the context of working together in the close confines of Kirk's team but, worse, Spock would inevitably assume that Kirk had requested the assignment and would resent it. _I'll play it your way, Spock, _he thought, hoping he was on the right track. _I'll respect your choices, this time round. That's what you asked for._

"I appreciate the thought," he said, carefully, casually "but I think, you know, Spock would prefer to be assigned to the Academy. Ops is really not his thing, and he's a born teacher. I always assumed he would go to the Academy if he ended up on Earth." And at least all that was absolutely true. He was doing Spock a favour above and beyond giving them both some space. Spock would absolutely loathe the politics of Operations. And then he would leave again. And that would be that.

Komack shrugged.

"Suits me, he'd have hardly been a barrel of laughs around the place. Just doing you a favour, Kirk."

Kirk clenched his hands. He understood the manoeuvre – Komack would claim a subtle moral high ground over this for weeks. He could cope with that, he'd got used to Komack over the past three years. What he was not prepared to tolerate was snide comments at Spock's expense. He thought he saw Stevens wince in sympathy and opened his mouth, only to find himself dismissed by a razor sharp Nogura who was not interested in a slanging match between two senior members of his staff. And Kirk, like Komack, shrugged to himself and went away into the morning bustle of HQ.

* * *

"You are angry and you are hurting yourself in order somehow to show Spock you don't need him. And you do."

To McCoy's surprise, Kirk wasn't annoyed, though he looked a bit taken aback. Being Kirk, he thought for a bit about what McCoy had said. They were sitting in Kirk's apartment in San Francisco and McCoy had called in for a drink on the way home from the hospital where a few remaining members of the _Enterprise _crew were still receiving treatment.

"Yes," he admitted, "it's true, I am angry. Much angrier than I'd realised. I'm not particularly proud of that, though I don't seem to be able to help it. I think I must have been sitting on it for years. I thought you doctors were all in favour of letting emotion out, you ought to be pleased. But it's more than that, anyway."

"You're not letting it out, Jim," McCoy said, bluntly, getting up and helping himself to Kirk's supply of Romulan ale, all of which had been provided by McCoy at one time or other, in order (he said) to be able to have something decent to drink when he came round. No one else ever drank it or thought it was decent. "You're sitting on it and nurturing it. There's a William Blake poem somewhere all about you – _I was angry with my friend, I told my wrath, My wrath did end. _Not just a pretty face, Mr Blake. What else is it, anyway?"

There was a small silence, into which Kirk's communicator spoke. Kirk glanced sideways at it, out of habit, and blinked when he saw the ID.

"Sorry, Bones, that's Nogura's office, I'll have to take it. Give me a minute, huh?" He walked a little way off, drink in one hand and communicator in the other, and stood in front of the window before saying

"Kirk here" – always that small rush of adrenaline at a call from Nogura; the command instinct, he supposed, never quite trained out.

But it was not Nogura, as it turned out.

"Cally Stevens, Admiral," and he remembered the aide at the briefing, the moment of sympathy at Komack's crass comment.

"Lieutenant, what can I do for you?" he said, mouthing _Sorry _at McCoy.

"I just wanted," the voice said hesitantly, " – well, sir, I just wanted to apologise for the other day. Admiral Komack was out of order, way out of order. I know I shouldn't say that about a flag officer, but it's not exactly the sort of comment we're trying to encourage through current diversity policies. I didn't know if you wanted to make anything out of it –", and Kirk thought he understood the reason for the call.

"No need to worry, Lieutenant," he said, amused. "Since we're being indiscreet, it's hardly the most irritating thing I've ever heard him say," (he heard a muffled laugh) "but you're right that I was annoyed – it's harder when it's about a friend." _Harder still, ironically, _he reflected, _when it's a friend who doesn't actually want you to protect him or put your neck on the line for him in any way, shape or form._ "Forget it, really. The last thing I'm going to do is make a fuss."

She sounded more relaxed now.

"Well, thank you Admiral. I didn't think you would, really. The C-in-C wanted me to smooth things over but I figured this call would probably be redundant."

"But you made it anyway. Very commendable, Lieutenant." He lifted a finger at McCoy, signalling _Just one minute._

"Yes, but not to ask you to ignore Admiral Komack."

"Oh?"

"Not, it was a pretext to ask you to have supper with me tomorrow night."

Kirk choked into his drink and then laughed.

"Well, I'll give you full marks for originality," he said, smiling broadly.

"Just give me a time and a place, Jim, that's all I need."

He glanced sideways at the doctor, said rapidly, "1900 hours, I'll come by your office", and ended the connection.

McCoy looked at him blandly.

"And how is the C-in-C?" he asked. Kirk wondered how much he had overheard, and why he himself felt uncomfortable about this, like being caught out. Between the lesser of two evils, he said, going back to the question McCoy had put before Stevens had called:

"I like myself much more than I did, say, two months ago."

"Me, too, Jim," McCoy said, cheerfully. He caught Kirk's eye and elucidated: "I mean, I like you much more now, too."

"Thanks, Bones," Kirk said, drily, "that's rather what I thought you meant. OK, so we agree. And you know what? The last time I really didn't like myself was the end of the five year mission. I don't want to go back, Bones. Not to three years ago, not to three weeks ago. And what bothers me, if I do what you and Spock want me to do, is what happens next time he leaves."

"He's not going anywhere, Jim."

Kirk snorted.

"Oh please. Of course he'll leave. It's what he does. He's developed a whole life skill out of leaving, all the time I've known him. He has an intergalactic PhD in leaving. He used to leave the room, sometimes he'd leave the conversation without leaving the room (a particularly speciality of his) and the next level up was leaving me without leaving the conversation. Then he transformed leaving into an art form when he left the solar system. And you think he's staying in San Francisco."

McCoy said, watching him,

"Who is she, Jim?"

He didn't pretend not to understand.

"I'm allowed to have a social life, Bones."

McCoy nodded, and stood up to finish his drink.

"No arguments from me, Admiral. Just be careful."

* * *

He had been right about the demarcation of twenty four hour periods and McCoy had been wrong.

Kirk had called him the day after the debriefing and he had gone, with a curiously breathless sensation, to meet him for a coffee near his office. When he arrived, Kirk had waved him to a seat, disappeared and returned with a cappuccino and a guava juice, which briefly immobilised Spock with surprised gratification – Kirk had remembered his preference. But the rest of the meeting had been between unremarkable and difficult. They had spoken about trivialities for a few minutes, and just as Spock was seeking courage to test out more difficult conversational waters, a colleague of Kirk's came into the cafe and came over to sit down with them. Spock was certain Kirk had not arranged this but neither did he make much effort to get rid of the individual, with the result that when some 47.2 minutes later Kirk glanced at his chronometer and said "I have a meeting with the team in five, sorry Spock, I'll call you. Neil – coming with me?" he and Spock had said absolutely nothing of any significance whatsoever.

Which was, perhaps, just as well, Spock reflected, sitting in his room at the Academy, after abandoning an attempt at meditation about which the Masters would have rightly been beyond disdainful. Because what would he have said?

_Is it too late, Admiral? _No, he could not have said that.

_How were the years, Admiral? _An illogical question, since it was abundantly clear to him from a number of sources that Kirk had spent the most acutely wretched three years of his life, and this had been to a considerable extent if not wholly the fault of Spock.

_I missed you, Admiral. _No, he couldn't have said that, either.

_Why did you have me re-assigned from your team, Admiral? _Perhaps the question he could have asked least of all but the answer to which he most intensely wanted. Or not, depending, in fact, on what it was.

When he had received orders to join Operations, Spock had been uncertain as to whether or not they originated from Kirk. This, however, had been irrelevant besides an un-Vulcan tide of relief that had swept over him. He knew that there was a gulf between him and Kirk, knew he was responsible for it, knew it was up to him to bridge it and had no real idea as to how to go about it. He had found most obvious routes to Kirk blocked, partly by his own diffidence and partly by Kirk's obvious reluctance to engage in any very personal dialogue with his former First Officer. Working with Kirk on a daily basis would solve all this at a stroke. Working with Kirk again would also be an unlooked for homecoming for Spock, despite the particular assignment.

The pain of being told Kirk had himself rewritten the orders and offered him an Academy posting had been beyond anything Spock had ever experienced. He knew this was illogical, could have told himself it was only to be expected, given his parting words to Kirk and given the anger he had clearly felt in Kirk when he had regained consciousness in the _Enterprise's _sickbay. He even told himself that an Academy posting was infinitely preferable to Operations and better suited to him and that Kirk knew him far too well not to have been aware of this. None of this seemed to have prepared him at all for the reality of the rejection. Spock cast about for a comparison and found himself thinking back to the days when he and McCoy had believed Jim dead at Kron's hands. In the first moments of shock after being given his new posting, though, he knew the pain of Kirk turning away was sharper – not least for being, he knew perfectly well, entirely his own fault.

He had supper with McCoy one night, without Kirk, and the doctor found Spock hard to reach. Despite his moment in Sickbay, he was not quite the same person who had confided in McCoy during the long weeks of Kirk's captivity and in the last weeks of the five year mission. There seemed less tension about him, less inner conflict, but (perhaps as a consequence) he was less open about his feelings and not prepared to discuss Kirk at all.

* * *

"She's nice enough, Jim, but she's hardly very exciting," McCoy said, after he had dropped in for a drink at Kirk's apartment and met Stevens on the way out. "I mean, she doesn't matter to you, does she?"

"Not in any important way, no, why?"

"Well, I saw Spock yesterday. I just wondered why you were so busy you haven't managed to have a proper conversation with him yet. Don't mess it up, Jim. Why can't you and he just sort it out? Surely it's not because you're so busy with Lieutenant Unimportant?"

"Well, there's a big attraction about unimportant, you know, Bones."

"No, I don't know. I don't really see it, myself, when what you and Spock have is rather more than important. "

"You have no idea," Kirk said, dreamily, ignoring him, "how nice it is to be with someone who just wants to be with me. Call me crazy, Bones. She doesn't refuse to speak to me for days on end, she doesn't pretend not to understand what I'm talking about, she actually likes it when I do something for her and she even uses monosyllabic words from time to time." Warming up, he said, "I could go on. I don't need to turn my apartment into a sauna in order for her to be comfortable, she has yet to strangle me in the throes of alien madness, she has never stolen my ship and, best of all, she shows not the slightest signs of wanting to go into a monastery."

"Convent, Jim. Convent. Nuns go to convents. Monks go to monasteries. If nuns went to monasteries it would destroy the point somewhat."

"You've been spending too much time with ," added Kirk, "she's just who she is. She doesn't remind me of someone else she isn't."

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing. When she asked me out," he said, "she wanted to try a particular restaurant and there was something wrong with the food and I was ill all night."

"Lovely. So why are you looking so fond and nostalgic?"

"You can't imagine the pleasure of being with someone," said Kirk, as a parting shot, "who is prepared to face up to the consequences of friendship. I had a vision, whilst throwing up, of asking Spock for a recommendation for a food dish and him saying he wouldn't want the responsibility for influencing or risking my well being."

* * *

Three weeks after the Vger mission, Kirk called Spock to suggest dinner, an invitation which was accepted with alacrity by Spock and then subsequently cancelled by Kirk when Cally Stevens invited him to the theatre. He sat and looked at his communicator for ten minutes after speaking to Spock and then called Stevens back to tell her, as gently as he could, that he did not want to go to the theatre and that, in fact, it was the wrong time for him to start a relationship. And then he got up, went over to his drinks cabinet, looked at McCoy's bottle of Romulan ale, muttered to himself "I don't believe I'm doing this", poured himself a very generous amount, sat on the side of his bed, scrubbed at his eyes with his hands as though trying to see more clearly, tipped back his head and drank the entire glass.

But he didn't call Spock back to reinstate their evening.

* * *

A week later, he sent Spock a message to ask if Spock wanted to accompany him to a lecture being given the following evening on recent developments in transwarp drive.

Kirk had been rather pleased with this idea. He knew he needed himself to get up to date on transwarp, also knew that it was not his field and he would find it dry to attend the lecture on his own. However, he also knew that if he took Spock, the topic would be much more meaningful to him. Without being entirely sure why, he knew that when the two of them were together, a discussion of the subject matter before them would always result in a two-handed debate that was more like a game of tennis than a scientific analysis and that, when the conversation was over, the issue would have somehow been absorbed into his knowledge bank like slotting coins into an old-fashioned machine.

The second reason for suggesting it was that it would present an opportunity to see Spock without being able to talk to him for most of the evening and without any real opportunity for anything personal to be said, which would be good for both of them.

The third reason was that he knew that Spock would take real pleasure in the occasion, which was exclusive to flag officers and their guests. And if he found himself unaccountably smiling at the prospect of actually giving Spock a treat – one that he was unlikely to reject – it was also true that it assuaged a sense of guilt, which was persistent despite being unacknowledged and not completely clear to him.

All of which reasons Spock entirely understood when he accepted the invitation.

Waiting for Kirk at the entrance to the auditorium, it occurred to the Vulcan that they were each acting out of character. There was an irony that Kirk, in avoiding any meaningful dialogue with him, was being a better Vulcan than Spock just as Spock, in failing at Gol and in spending his days on Earth trying to rebuild an almost certainly terminally damaged friendship with a recalcitrant human (a doubly illogical pursuit), was certainly confirming the views of the Masters that his human flaws were too dominant for him to conform to appropriate Vulcan standards.

It had happened before – times when Kirk had been the grounded, ultra-rational one and he had been emotionally off-balance. Leila, Zarabeth, the koon-ut-kalifee – even the orbit around Psi 2000, when he had succumbed to the syndrome just before Kirk. They had always been each other's balance and this was of obscure comfort to Spock. Thinking back to how those earlier situations had been resolved, he remembered Kirk hitting him, hard – after he'd beamed up from Omicron Ceti Three, in the boardroom in the Psi 2000 orbit – and it had hurt, but nothing approaching as much as this.

The truth was that Kirk had always been the one to accept him for who he was, Vulcan and human both, which meant Kirk's acceptance of him was somehow inextricably bound to who Spock could be. Perhaps a small reason for that was that there was in Kirk, too, a part of what made Spock human and what made him Vulcan. He was not sure, any more, he knew how to be either without Kirk. He would hold on, at least for a while.

And Spock's most humiliating failure, unacknowledged to Kirk and unperceived by him, was that, excellent as the speaker was, sitting next to Kirk and keenly aware of the thousands of times he had sat beside his Captain on their travels together through the star systems, he only managed to concentrate on 92.4% of the lecture.

* * *

Six weeks after the Vger mission, Kirk was woken early one morning by the computer. Rolling over in protest, he noted the time and rolled back again, groaning in disbelief. If he ignored the computer malfunction and focused very hard, he would still get another two hours' sleep. The computer, however, in a tone Kirk would never have accepted from a junior officer, informed him immediately that the early call had been occasioned by an urgent summons to a security meeting at HQ.

Kirk had been a starship captain and starship captains can get showered and dressed in remarkably short periods of time, which meant Kirk had only nine point two minutes to think about an urgent security meeting at HQ. Surely, he thought suddenly, surely not Vger again, not now. Surely Decker and Ilia... his thoughts trailed off, incoherently. As he picked up his communicator from the table, he noticed his message light was blinking and, stooping over the mail portal, saw there was a message from Spock. He hesitated – and then deliberately left it. He was not up to dealing with painful messages from Vulcans at this hour of the morning and one crisis per day was enough. He would call Spock back that night.

It was already ten minutes since the computer call and he left at a run.


	8. Chapter 8

"_Dolganin."_

The syllables hit Kirk like hailstones, like a glass of cold water in the face. Where it had all started, where he had once planned a solitary leave with Spock to discuss their future - where he had left Spock alone for Kron to go after. Saying goodbye to Spock, the morning he left the ship with his team on the _Copernicus_ to carry out the Dolganin survey, he had reached out to touch his shoulder, and Spock had permitted it. That had been the last time they had been in physical contact.

Well, no. There had been those two other occasions. Once on Starbase 19. And then, again, in Sickbay.

He forced himself back to the present, which comprised sitting round a table in a briefing room deep within HQ, far too early in the morning, already on his third coffee and listening to Komack's latest protégée giving a report on an unidentified craft which had not only breached Federation space but had now entered Earth's orbit. The team had been tracking it for days. There had been no immediate cause for concern, because the ship was of Fleet design and all security barriers throughout the sector had apparently been passed without issue. However, the craft was now in orbit around Earth and had apparently beamed down an unknown number of personnel into San Francisco – all without giving any form of identity or responding to any communications.

"That's damned odd," Komack said, frowning. "Do we have any idea of the origin of the vessel?"

And that was when one of the security ensigns – Harmer, his name was – had said:

"The vessel itself is of Fleet design, sir, as previously reported. But its immediate point of origin, in terms of this particular journey, appears to be the Dolganin system."

Kirk had barely time to react to this before the doors to the briefing room burst open. Most of his mind was focused exclusively on the security alert, and with the intuitive flair which had once made him James T Kirk, he was beginning the process of figuring out why he thought Dolganin might be significant and the missing pieces of the events of three years previously which had so derailed his own life. At the same time, with the detached part of his mind which always noted circumstantial details without distracting the rest of his brain from getting on with the real work, he noticed a couple of Komack's aides hopelessly protesting the breach in decorum and being swept aside by Mike Fisher, once an ensign under him on the _Enterprise, _now heading ground security for HQ. He was wild-eyed and slightly dishevelled, pulled himself together to sketch the briefest of salutes to the meeting, and then said, as though not entirely believing what he was saying.

"There are reports of shots being fired at the Academy, sir. And seven eye witnesses have described seeing Klingons on the campus."

The meeting erupted all around him, but Kirk was already on his feet.

He had it. Too late – far, far too late – three years too late – he must be senile, he must have stopped thinking - but he had the connection.

"Kron," he said. And was off, running.

He pulled out his communicator as he ran, called Spock, called him again, got no answer, and yelled at the instrument, knowing it was a pointless waste of breath – breath which he would need for other purposes.

"Spock, where are you? Call me, call me, call me, call me, call me. Spock!"

It must have been over three kilometres from HQ to the Academy and, with lungs bursting and muscles protesting, Kirk still found the focus to pray every step of the way.

_Oh please God, not again._

Spock's face, his voice, that conversation, every syllable of which was engraved on Kirk's memory forever:

_I will not be a hostage._

But Kron was after Kirk and Spock had always been the way to Kirk and Kron had figured that out a long, long time ago. _In which case, how in the name of heaven had Kirk apparently forgotten? "_The ties that bind"_, _he had said, to Spock. The ties that would bind Spock hostage. He was bound to Spock, always had been. How the hell had he forgotten, when Kron had not?

Out of the security block, across the square, short cut over the grass.

_Please God, not again._

Past bewildered cadets, almost into a stationary aircar.

_Please, please, please, please, please._

And then a straight run across the outside of the Academy campus.

And all the way, his thoughts echoed with words, with pain – but they were _his_ words, and pain _he_ had inflicted. _I'm shattered, Spock. _Senile, indeed. _Let's take a raincheck. _No, not senile. Angry. _Sorry, Spock, I'll call you. _Angry and stupid and ridiculous. _Cally Stevens_. Angry and stupid and ridiculous and idiotic and selfish. A word in time with each frantic footfall.

What did it matter if Spock had hurt him? In the final analysis, what did it even matter if he had left him? At least he had been alive, safe on Gol. But he had come back to Starfleet, come back to Kirk, and Kirk had said _Let's take a raincheck _and had dinner with Cally Stevens.

He had had him reassigned to the Academy – _"There are reports of shots being fired at the Academy" _– and, dear God, he was responsible for Spock being there. Instead, they could have spent the past six weeks working together, healing together, finding each other. And even if they hadn't, because it wasn't what Spock wanted, at least he could have perhaps have beaten Spock at chess and Spock could have told him he was being illogical. Just one last time.

_Just don't let it end like this_ - with a massacre on the Academy campus and the things he had never said to Spock and the message from the Vulcan he had deliberately ignored that morning.

First buildings coming into view – _where was Spock? Where would he be? Not asleep, not now, probably first morning class, that's why he's not answering. Lecture halls, lecture halls, please God._

He could hear the first sounds of phaser fire as he ran.

* * *

Spock could hear it, too.

Vulcan hearing had identified it precisely at the sound of the first shot. Vulcan understanding had, to Spock' consternation, followed 1.07 nanoseconds behind, in sheer incomprehension that there appeared to be a pitched battle being carried outside in the Starfleet Academy campus.

He said, immediately,

"Class, dismissed. Please make your way immediately to the security area to the rear of the building and follow appropriate procedures."

He himself moved over to the window and looked down into the plaza outside. In the distance, he could see figures running rapidly, and then a large silhouette stepped out from behind a tree and Spock's heart (not that he would have admitted this to anyone) missed a beat.

_Klingons._

And then he thought.

_Jim._

He estimated that it would take him 17.8 seconds to leave the building and made it in 12.

* * *

Kirk skidded to a halt in the main square outside the lecture halls. He had already realised that wherever Spock's schedule dictated he should be that morning, he was unlikely still to be there. He looked rapidly around at an oddly deserted area, and then two things happened simultaneously.

The air erupted with phaser fire. He saw a couple of security guards fall, heard someone call out and the sound of crashing.

And Spock appeared, three metres in front of him.

Afterwards, Kirk could not have said exactly what happened. He knew later, looking back, and even instinctively, at the time, that he had tried to pull Spock down, to cover him from the crossfire and that Spock had tried to protect him at the same time. What actually happened, he wasn't sure – he just knew that he took in Spock's appearance with an almost sickening wave of relief which threatened to render him light-headed and then started towards the Vulcan, intending to dive to the ground and pull Spock with him.

He found himself lying on the grass with Spock, trying his best to protect Spock's head, and getting tangled with Vulcan arms which were clearly trying to carry out a similar function for Kirk. He was caught up against Spock, pressed tight, shoulder to toe, face muffled against Spock's shoulder.

He said, very quietly, in Spock's ear:

"I don't suppose you have a phaser, do you?"

"No, Admiral," said Spock. "Do you?"

"No. Damn." A slight pause. "But I'm glad we bumped into each other."

Spock said,

"Had you noticed...?"

"That they are Klingons? Yes. Worse than that, I'm afraid, Commander," he swallowed –_ridiculous to be worrying about Spock's reaction when the real issue was survival, but even so – _"It's Kron. I am quite certain it's Kron."

He could feel the Vulcan's body tense slightly as he took in the information, wondered about the resonances in Spock's mind in terms of what Kron had meant to them personally, remembered that Spock was in contact with him and could hear his thoughts, and found he didn't care. The tone of voice between them was entirely normal, conversational – it was as if they were on a mission from the _Enterprise, _as if the three years had not happened, as if they were not in terrible danger, as if they were not wound in each other's arms.

_E__veryone has the right to put themselves in the line of fire for the people they love._ At least he and Spock seemed, finally, to be agreeing about that. If only there were only one line of fire and if only he and Spock could decide which of them was putting themselves in it, it might be a more effective strategy.

He pulled back slightly, and looked over Spock's shoulder as the phaser fire eased, momentarily.

"There are two guards down behind us, about five metres away," he said, quietly and clearly. "I am going to roll over there and grab their weapons as soon as there's a break." Spock nodded, understanding, back under Kirk's command, in a familiar place. He could feel Kirk's thoughts under his hands, like staccato. And Kirk said "Now!" and suddenly the tightly curled warmth left Spock's body and he was off.

What happened next seemed at the time, in contrast with his encounter with Spock, to happen in very slow motion. Kirk reached the fallen guards, retrieved two phasers and stood, bringing one up to the ready and throwing the other to Spock.

There was an explosion behind one of the lecture halls, a crash and Kron ran on to the campus, phaser held unwaveringly at Kirk, who was still adjusting the controls on the weapon he had picked up.

"Kirk!" He would have recognised that voice anywhere from the worst of his nightmares, three years ago. His breathing checked and he stood still, slowly. "Drop the phaser, Kirk. Drop it! We meet again. How good to see old friends. And get together. Isn't that what you humans do – get together?"

And Spock caught the second phaser and turned with all the grace, speed and power of a Vulcan with a commanding officer in danger, and fired. Kron caught the movement in his peripheral vision, just in time, and fired too, and Kirk saw Spock caught in the phaser effect.

But the Vulcan had fired first.

* * *

Kirk was back in the security room at HQ, with Komack and Nogura, but this time with Spock as well.

He registered, to his surprise, that it was early evening. He had gone with Spock to the emergency room and seen him, under protest, given treatment for what appeared, thank God, to be minor phaser burns. He seemed to have spent all day in briefings, or running, or in hospital or hiding under fire. But mainly in briefings. He and Spock had been questioned separately and together, about the shoot out at the Academy, about the kidnapping three years ago (again), even about the Dolganin survey (again). He thought that if someone asked him one more question about Kron, he might just laugh. Or cry. And he had agreed to have a medical check the next day, following some implant they had found in Kron that appeared to be linked to him and which might have been responsible for the vessel's unchecked passage past Federation security buoys.

The Klingons (over fifty in all), those who had survived, had surrendered soon after Kron was killed. It was hard to understand what they had hoped to achieve, other than the potential to lever the advantage of surprise to pick off a few chosen targets. (The First Officer of the _Farragut _had been killed, as well as three civilians and a couple of cadets, plus an Academy professor who had tried to protect them. And then there were the wounded. Including Spock.) Komack was of the view that it had all been some kind of stunt, possibly even a diversionary tactic, but Kirk thought that this was at least partly because Komack was driven to belittle the significance of anything involving Kirk. (_God forbid, _Kirk reflected to himself, _that Spock and I should have lost our friendship and twice come close to losing both our lives over anything important.)_ Kirk's own view was that Kron had been fixated on revenge and the Klingon High Command had supported him because they had nothing to lose by watching a suicide mission, and because why not?

Nogura himself, eyes missing nothing, said:

"I think, Admiral, that these two have given us enough for one day. There'll be plenty more questions and more to review, but it can wait, I think."

Komack nodded, unsmiling. He clearly thought the entire episode was Kirk's fault, and Kirk was not wholly disposed to disagree with him. He was naturally unable to do anything but dismiss them, after what Nogura had said, but equally would obviously have preferred to question Kirk all night, preferably under torture.

Nogura said, kindly, breaking rank.

"Go away, Jim, Commander. Get some rest. I'm very glad you're both still alive."

Komack looked as though he didn't entirely echo this sentiment. And Kirk said

"Thank you, sir." And then, casually, "Spock, would you like a drink?"

* * *

Spock did not much want a drink, but if Kirk had suggested just then that they wire themselves to a dilithium explosive device and sit and talk in an igloo he would probably have agreed. He remembered the last time he drank with Jim Kirk – in Kirk's quarters, the night before he went to Dolganin.

Uncannily echoing Spock's thoughts as would once have been routine between them, Kirk said as they threaded their way through curious crowds to the bar:

"I think the Federation may have to revisit their relationship with the Dolganin government."

"Indeed. On what basis?"

"Just a feeling," Kirk said, absently. Spock realised that from the moment of Kron's appearance on Earth and throughout the day, even including their own coming together on the ground in the campus, Kirk had never stopped analysing and thinking through implications. He remembered what McCoy had told him about Kirk's three years in San Francisco and suspected that Kirk had found himself, again somehow, in the past few weeks. This was the Kirk he remembered.

That odd request for a command-led survey on Dolganin – specifically, for the command team of the _Enterprise. _They had dismissed it at the time as a diplomatic nonsense. Kron's need for a hideout, somewhere uninhabited, to execute a long, long-term scheme. The prolonged negotiations over the Dolganin system entering the Federation; no one at the time had really understood the reasons.

Spock could not imagine why he had not worked all this out himself. Kirk's eyes, resting on him with an ancient affection and seeing all the way through him without the need for telepathy, suggested that there might have been other things on his mind. Then and now. It was not a point he was prepared to debate with the Admiral. At least, not this evening.

Kirk shouldered his way to the bar, and ordered a couple of brandies, then brought the drinks to a quiet corner, and pushed one over to the Vulcan.

He wanted very badly to ask "_Did I save you or did you save me? Was that your right, or mine? And was it logical, or only simple?" _But he swallowed it down. He knew the answer and he saw it reflected in the Vulcan's eyes. Instead, he said

"To truth, Commander."

Spock took a swallow, let the taste diffuse through him – he had not drunk brandy since the night before Dolganin – and wondered what was coming.

Kirk said, looking straight at him:

"I have behaved unconscionably to you ever since the end of the Vger mission."

Spock shook his head, disturbed.

"The offence was mine. You were within your rights not to want to resume previous arrangements. You were neither discourteous nor –"

Kirk interrupted

"I treated you just like everyone else."

"Yes," Spock agreed, finding that this was so and finding, illogically, that it was oddly difficult to hear, to know.

Kirk was watching him.

"And you have never been _everyone else_ to me. Ever." He waited, till he was sure Spock had heard him, and went on. "I was angry and hurt and scared and rationalising that something else entirely was going on. Spock – I'm sorry."

Spock nodded, not sure what else to say. He understood, however, the nature of the game, and that it was his turn next. His mouth was dry, because he knew what he must say. It might well be the hardest thing he had ever said in his life. But he owed it to Kirk – even to himself – to say it, and fortunately Vulcans do not experience fear.

"An assault is an action which has a very broad range of connotations, Admiral," Spock said very slowly. His heart was hammering in his side. Had he not been a Vulcan, he would have been terrified – sufficiently so to have given up, thanked Kirk for the drink and run out of San Francisco (or preferably Federation space) as quickly as possible. But he went on. "In legal terms, part of the definition of an assault is the intent which lies behind it. It is possible that on a previous occasion I may have neglected to inform you, through uncertainty on my part as to whether the information would have been welcome, that a particular assault could also have comprised an entirely different action, contingent, of course, on motivation."

There was utter silence, which seemed to go on for much longer than the eleven point two seconds he calculated. He found the courage to raise his eyes to a speechless Kirk's and found his answer there. Kirk raised a hand towards the Vulcan - but then let it drop. There were more questions to ask first.

"I told McCoy you would leave again," Kirk said, and waited a beat. "McCoy thinks I'm wrong," he added.

"Unusually, in this instance," Spock replied, "I am forced to agree with the doctor and not with you."

Kirk smiled. "McCoy also thinks I have been wallowing in pride and anger and I think he's right about that, too."

"I would not like to adopt a course of action which involved agreeing with the doctor twice in seventeen seconds," Spock returned. He took another swallow. "Admiral," he asked, very carefully, "may I ask your reasons for reassigning me from your team to the Academy?"

Kirk's eyes widened.

"Oh God," he said in a low voice, and covered his face with a hand. Then he took the hand away and said, "I didn't realise you knew. I thought it would be your preference." And then, with an effort, "That's true, but it's not the only truth. I think I wanted some distance, too. But I never thought you'd find out I had been involved in the decision."

The two looked at each other.

Kirk said, suddenly, in an oddly bleak voice, "Spock, I can't play chess without you."

There was a pause and then Kirk let a smile come back and said: "I started, you finish, that's fair. One last offering, Commander?"

And he found the right one – said, gravely

"The final margin by which the number of chess games in which you were victorious exceeded the number in which you lost to me on the _Enterprise _during the five year mission was eleven."

Kirk smiled, very slightly, looked at him as though reaching a decision, and then jerked his head towards Spock's glass.

"Do you want to finish that?"

Spock looked at it.

"I do not think so," he said.

Kirk reached out and took both their glasses and set them down on the table. Eyes still on Spock, he said:

"You haven't been to my apartment, but it's not far from here."


	9. Chapter 9

Spock let his feet take him through the doorway into Kirk's apartment, past the seating area to the large window overlooking the Bay. He had come with Kirk from the bar in complete silence – not the silence of the past weeks, and certainly not the silence of the Gol years, but a waiting, a question unanswered, a restless stillness before a break in the weather. He was uncertain what was happening, but he was very sure of two things. One was that he wanted it, whatever it was, more than anything he had ever wanted in his life. And the other was that, whatever it was, the Vulcan Masters would not approve.

He looked out into the darkness where Kirk would have looked, through the months and years, cleared his throat and broke the quiet.

"It is an impressive view."

"It's all I've ever wanted," said Kirk, quietly, from behind him.

The Vulcan looked round, sharply, as if not trusting the double-entendre. Kirk thought the moment had all the potential to be awkward and difficult, and needed to come to an ending, one way or the other, very quickly indeed. He knew the ball was in his court, that one of them needed to make a leap of faith and it would have to be him and now. It was he who had baulked at it, all those years ago, and it was Spock who had been brave enough to make that admission in the bar about Starbase 19. Spock was worth a risk or two. And the risk he would not take, after the terror of the early morning, was of ever facing _too late, _ever again.

He took a step, saw in Spock's eyes that he was right, and took another. They were facing each other, almost touching now, in a mirror image to how they had stood on Starbase 19, and he was close enough to Spock to see all their shared memories, and then Kirk said under his breath, "Strange new worlds, Commander," and his arms went around his Vulcan for the first time.

The shock was that there was no shock – that it felt as natural as playing chess, as arguing the strategy of a mission, as sitting on the bridge. But then his mouth found Spock's and he was lost.

Some aeons later, finally pulling back sufficiently far to see the same dazed hunger reflected in Spock's face, he reached for words and managed:

"Well, Mr Spock, I would say your technique has improved considerably since the last time we did this," and then, seeing the look on Spock's face, added hastily: "I think we'll count that as our first kiss, shall we?" and pulled Spock back towards him hard. He had never allowed himself to envisage – really to envisage – what this might be like, how it would be between them, but Spock's touch, the Vulcan's unexpected certainty, the feeling of being absolutely known through and through were, together, undoing him, not only wiping away the stresses of the day but unravelling by every touch every moment of loneliness and hurt in the past three years. Even the passing memory of that bitter separation was enough to make him, on reflex, press closer into the Vulcan and Spock, catching the thought, tightened his arms around him in response.

Resting his forehead against Spock's shoulder, he said, in the manner of one arriving at a well-considered judgement,

"Good second kiss, too, don't you think?"

Spock let a hand drift gently down the back of Kirk's head, and said,

"Admiral, it might be helpful to let me know immediately if you were intending that I should keep score in this context on a similar basis to our games of chess."

"Hm," said Kirk, smiling into the shoulder. _Back to this again. Thank God – oh, thank God. _"Tempting. But I think it might keep you rather busy. And it might be interesting to find out exactly what I have to do to get you to call me Jim. Clearly something for me to work on there."

Ten minutes later, Spock asked, an unusually breathless note in his voice: "Do you think we are breaking any regulations?"

"Oh, I certainly hope so," Kirk said, fervently. "But I'm only just getting started."

A few minutes later, he added softly into the sweep of an ear,

"Let me know, though, won't you, Commander, if we start transcending the discipline of the service."

Spock inwardly classified this as a comment not worthy of a reply, but something in it triggered a train of thought about how the reality of being with Kirk was, of course, just like being with Kirk. As he buried his face in the soft warm hollow of Kirk's neck, and felt Kirk jolt beneath him, he thought, incongruously, not about what he was doing and where he was going but thought back, instead – to how much he had missed the simple distraction of trading one-liners with Kirk. Perhaps, he mused, fingers moving over Kirk's neck and shoulders, lost in sensation, the secret of Kirk's enduring hold on him was that Kirk's particular and idiosyncratic form of discourse allowed you to express affection, concern and even desire within the vocabulary of humour and teasing; without the need for anything more blatant and less subtle, because Kirk had always seemed content to communicate on that level. This was particularly valuable if Kirk happened to be the only person in the universe for whom you would be interested in expressing those feelings and if you happened to be challenged by expressing them more directly. He remembered the Gol years, the silence between them, the sharp yearning (to which he had refused to admit, even to himself) for a single joke from Kirk which he could pretend not to understand – and how pedestrian everyone else's discourse had seemed, like monochrome after colour.

How strange was it that Kirk inhabited so much colder a world, so much cooler a body and yet was the only source of warmth Spock had ever know? He moved involuntarily closer at the thought,

And Kirk's thoughts, whilst rather less coherent, were not dissimilar. How on earth had he stopped trying to contact Spock after a bare three months at Gol? How had he not moved physically to Vulcan and not hammered on the door every day; how, in fact, had he not simply blown up the doors of Gol and forcibly beamed Spock out; how on earth had he fooled himself, during the weeks since Vger, that Spock was anything – _anything – _other than utterly indispensible to him? And how on earth had he allowed Spock to believe anything else? He must have been deranged to have risked it. He knew that, at least until that last, awful conversation before Spock went to Gol, he himself had never been very open about his feelings for Spock, knew Spock could justifiably accuse him of being as Vulcan as he in this respect, feeling it easier for both of them if he kept it cloaked in their usual games of feint and attack. But now – _I hope he knows now, dear God I hope he knows because if not..._

Catching hold of the echo of this thought, it occurred to Spock to challenge his earlier assumption, and to wonder whether Kirk was, indeed, content with the rather meagre offering of verbal affection he received from the Vulcan. It would be of the highest priority to address any deficiency in this regard, but only when Spock had time to do so. Some other time.

"God, Spock," Kirk said, now lying full length on the sofa, eight limbs hopelessly entangled, manufacturing a pause for breath, "you and I are widely considered two of the brightest talents in Starfleet. What in heaven's name have we been doing for eight years?"

"Well, there were, if you recall, one or two other matters requiring our attention during that period of time."

"Really? I can't for the life of me think of any. For God's sake, if I ever start getting distracted like that ever again, stop me immediately."

Kirk's last coherent thought, before the world retreated, before awareness receded only to the two of them, Spock's hands, his eyes, his mouth and the final fusion of Vulcan and human, before finding at last the fulfilment he had sought in the warmest alien sun he knew, was the look on Spock's face. For some reason, he wanted that moment very badly, to see the Vulcan composure finally break, but he missed it – his own head thrown back, his own eyes closed as he gave in to overwhelming sensation. But he heard his own name, called out twice, first quietly and then as though wrenched out of the Vulcan in a voice he had never heard from Spock in his life – not Admiral, not Captain, but _Jim_, and even as the tide of feeling rose and fled within him, he smiled to himself.

* * *

Kirk rolled up on one elbow and looked down affectionately at the extraordinary fact of Spock, lying on his sofa with his face utterly relaxed

"How about a bath, Commander? I know you think I haven't realised, but I'm not so far gone that I can't see the bruises; not to mention the fact that that burn probably needs treating again."

"I am functional," Spock said, mildly.

"And I have reason to know that," Kirk said, grinning, "but I have a nice tub and it's big enough for two."

"While I do not in the slightest dispute the undoubtedly manifest attractions of your facilities, experience of bodily hygiene regimes adopted to date suggests that the strategy you suggest will not be the most efficient in terms of achieving the requisite level of cleanliness."

"In your experience?"

"In, as you say, my experience."

"I'd be interested to see what the competition looks like," Kirk commented, intrigued. "Exactly how many people have you shared a bath with?"

An incongruous eyebrow went up and Kirk watched it with a rush of memory.

"Would you like a precise figure?" the Vulcan asked.

"I would expect nothing less."

"None," Spock said. Kirk laughed, and trailed a hand down the Vulcan face, suspecting Spock actually needed some time out, inwardly celebrating their return to a place where they once again seemed to know intuitively when to be apart and when to be together, without it being a cause for hurt.

"All right, Commander. The facilities are yours – this time. I'll sort out the accommodation."

And so Spock sat, surrounded by warm water and failing, for perhaps the first time in his life, to think of anything at all. His mind was a prey to a range of sensations and memories, he _felt _Kirk in every cell of his body and was aware of a new warmth washing through him which could have been the bathwater but which he strongly suspected was what humans call happiness. Vulcans did not experience this phenomenon, of course, but he effortlessly reached the conclusion that for once he would avoid explaining this to Kirk.

Then he thought about the being he had killed that day, because it was a magnitude for Spock to kill, even a Klingon, even for Kirk. And found no regrets. This was unusual for the Vulcan, who had killed many times in Starfleet service, had never questioned the need to do so under fire but had always revisited it afterwards, both in terms of pragmatism and ethics and, when circumstances permitted, privately seeking a level of atonement through meditation. But not this time.

Not this time, and it seemed to Spock that the reason was a coming to terms with what he had shied away from with _I will not be a hostage. _He could not be to Kirk what he wanted to be without accepting that he was hostage for Kirk, and Kirk for him. If he and Kirk were to be together, then he would have to accept the risks that Kirk would take for him, as he would for Kirk, and because of that it seemed that even a pacifist had the right to kill Kron. Some day, he was sure – some day, Kirk and he would go exploring again. He was not sure when or where, or indeed why he was sure, but he was certain that they would. And because that was Kirk's choice, and therefore his, the threat to either or both would be part of the fabric of their daily lives, along with the choices each would freely make in the face of that threat. Spock could see no future in which he would not step between Kirk, his ship and danger, even at the risk of personal annihilation. And no future in which Kirk would not come back for him.

The Masters at Gol had taught that the true road forward was to learn to grow as an individual and to take responsibility for who and what you are. Spock knew, however, that this was incorrect. He was responsible for Kirk – for his physical safety, yes, but beyond that, for his essence, his soul, if you like, for all that he was - for whatever made him Jim Kirk, and in return he had to accept that Kirk was responsible for his. As surely as if it were his very own.

Kirk came in with a towel and said that it was three o'clock in the morning.

"Not much point in you going home, tonight, really," he suggested, casually, "given the lateness of the hour and your current attire, what do you think? Might get cold." And the Vulcan agreed, gravely, that it would be logical not to leave the apartment until a time when he was once more fully clothed.

Kirk dialled up the heat and grabbed a couple of thick blankets from the closet, waving Spock through to the bedroom. Sitting on the bed, he tugged the Vulcan backwards so that he was lying on his back against Kirk's chest, head under Kirk's chin, and wound the blankets around them both.

"I'm afraid this apartment is designed around my own specifications and metabolism but we can change that." He paused, then went on in the giddy realisation that he could say anything, anything at all to Spock now "I was going to ask you to share it with me, once. Well, this one or something like it. Years and years ago. Before Dolganin."

"But you did not." The voice held a question.

"Insufficient data, Commander," he said, thinking back to his dossier of empirical evidence. And Dossier B. "Would you have said yes?"

He heard a lot in the hesitation which followed – the unhappiness both had suffered for three years and which might have been avoided, but also the lessons Spock had learned, without which he might not have said yes, and what Kirk now understood about what he wanted, without which he might not have actually braved himself to ask – together with an undercurrent of a Vulcan version of pleasure in the fact that Kirk had even contemplated such a thing, so many years ago. And Spock said "Perhaps we should not look back."

Kirk moved his chin once back and forth over the black hair in assenting caress.

"Tell me about Gol."

"I believe you have already discussed the faculty at some length with my mother," Spock said.

Kirk smiled all over at that memory, and then again at the revelation that Amanda had relayed his calls to Spock. And then he realised what that meant – that Spock had known of his desperate attempts to contact him, and had maintained silence regardless. Spock, in contact with Kirk head to toe, read all these thoughts with ease and stirred uncomfortably.

"Jim..."

"I think," Kirk said gently, from a full heart and a tight throat, "we might have to agree to forgive each other, you and I, and leave it at that."

"You would have less to gain than I from a fresh slate," said Spock, unwilling to let past transgressions go so easily, the memory of what he had inflicted on Kirk sharp in his mind.

"You may think so. But I disagree. And I'm the ranking officer here. You said it, Spock. Let's not look back."

They lay in silence a while and Kirk threaded his fingers in and out of Spock's.

"Tell me about Vulcan bonds."

"That would be for you to consider and decide, Jim," said the warm weight on his chest, against a swelling tide of what might have been elation, had he been human.

"Well, for both of us to consider together, I would have thought," Kirk said, gravely, allowing a smile to start growing. "I'm certainly not considering one with any other Vulcan, in case that's what you were suggesting. At least, not at the moment - depending, of course, on how you and I work out."

Spock appeared not to hear Kirk's last remark – a strategy he had evolved many years previously to deal with the helter skelter that conversations with Kirk tended to comprise. In response to the first sentence, he said "There will never be anyone else."

"No," Kirk agreed, letting the smile widen. Spock knew his voice well enough to know what the smile looked like without needing to see it, to mind not seeing it and, all at the same time, not to want to move from where he was in order to do so. His fingers tightened around Kirk's.

"Will you tell me about Kron?"

"He never touched me," said Kirk, instantly understanding the question. "Not in that way. Did it matter so much, back then?" he asked, softly.

"It seems so. Tell me about Admiral Ciani."

Kirk smiled, if a little sadly, at an easier question. "Nothing to tell, Commander. Just sticking plaster."

Spock seemed unable to let it go quite so easily. Aware of Kirk's normal taste in partners, of the field of competition, of Kirk's incoherent unspoken thoughts on the sofa earlier that evening, he said, with difficulty, "I entertain no further doubts as to my preferences in this regard. Indeed, I have been certain of this for a longer period of time than I have allowed you to realise or than would have been logical to inform you. But I am aware that this is a departure from normal practice for you; I cannot be – that is, I am perhaps unlikely to be able to provide the type of interaction –"

And Kirk, horribly moved by this so-typical declaration of love couched, as it was, in an admission of inadmissibility, took only 0.56 nanoseconds to grin inwardly both at Spock's choice of wording and also at a joyous vision of Spock giving him flowers and writing him poetry and said swiftly "I don't want you to be anything other than exactly who you are right now this minute. Don't change. Please don't ever change."

He shifted suddenly, found Spock's face and framed it in his hands. Eyes drifting over so-familiar features, shadowy in the dark, knowing his own face was entirely unguarded and hoping the Vulcan could read it, he said "_Spock!_" rather unsteadily and, as the Vulcan looked back at him, Kirk saw the very faintest of smiles etched around the corners of his mouth, just caught in the light of the sun coming up.


	10. Chapter 10

Jim Kirk woke late and took a couple of seconds to understand why it was broad daylight, why he was so warm and why there was much less room in his bed than there had been the previous night. Then he lay, much as Spock had sat in the bath the previous night, allowing his thoughts to spill, letting himself understand this new, strange and overwhelming reality. His companion was still very deeply asleep and Kirk reflected wryly that they would have to reach an accommodation on the thermostat, knowing the unaccustomed heat and extra blankets were the reason he had woken early. Thanking his own foresight in turning off the computer alarm the day before, he let his eyes drift over the healing marks on Spock's shoulders and got up very quietly.

In the kitchen, he made himself a coffee and checked there was fruit juice in the fridge. He could not remember ever in his life being so absolutely, shatteringly, blindingly, dazzlingly happy. He supposed that this would change, that he would at some point in the future get irritated with a junior officer, lose something important, get stressed, have a headache, but just now he couldn't imagine it. He couldn't even remember disliking Komack. He thought that perhaps it had been like this when he was very small, perhaps Christmas when he was six, but it was too long ago and he was sure, in any case, he would have remembered feeling anything quite so extraordinary. It was as though his life until the previous evening had taken place in an entirely different dimension, an entirely different colour.

He wondered briefly if he would in fact simply fail to do anything ever for the rest of his life other than hold the Vulcan close and talk nonsense to him, but in fact he settled down to work easily enough. He knew there would be fallout from the day before and wanted to sort what he could before Spock woke up. He worked steadily through a number of messages and queries, thinking that if he could clear some work then when Spock had a break from classes they could take some time, go away somewhere. _Not Dolganin_, he thought.. He remembered the eleven days Spock owed him from the chess score and smiled at the idea of persuading Spock to let Kirk beat him very quickly ten times in succession and then resuscitating the old arrangement and taking three weeks' leave. And the destination would be Iowa, he had already decided – he would take Spock to Iowa and show him his childhood.

And then he heard the bedroom door open and felt the Vulcan standing very close behind him. Without turning, Kirk reached backwards to find Spock's hand. Long fingers folded around his, and Kirk smiled and held back and held on and said to himself, very quietly indeed, "_Empirical_". But very little is inaudible to Vulcan ears.

"Jim?"

"Nothing, Commander. Just closing a file." And Kirk switched off the computer and leaned back against the evidence behind him.


End file.
